Great Room Steps and Pantry Wall Trim

Welcome back to our home renovation. This time I’m going to get into some trim here in the kitchen space. It feels like not that long ago I was doing all of the trim for the sunroom, and now I have a lot more trim work ahead of me.

With this tall cabinet finally here and its final position set, the location of all of the trim for the cased opening is set. I’m going to work on getting the steps in place, and then I’m going to get this wall above me all finished up. Like before, I have to think through the phases of everything, because a lot of the trim is interdependent on other stuff being in place before it can start. I’m going to leave the casings off of the appliance cabinet for now, because the head height changes because of the steps and I have crowns that will be returning into the casing as well.  

On this wall, there is a step because the band board is thicker than the paneling that will be on the wall and the casing goes into it. So that’ll be interesting to massage out as well. Both of the casings will be beaded, so I’ll set the machine one time and set run all the beaded casing for everything in here. But that’s something for later.

First step is the flat stuff. There are some pieces I need to make to wrap the columns in the breakfast nook area; I can make the risers for the steps; I can make the jamb for the pantry; and I can make the flat casings for this middle window. So that is my to-do list for now. 

Risers are up first. I have some white oak boards which are not in the best shape and I wouldn’t use for my drawer material. I need to stabilize some splits with some epoxy first. One of the nice things about using white oak is that it’s a lot harder and more durable than the soft maple I’ve been using. Because these boards will be close to feet, I feel better about having a harder substrate. 

While that epoxy is soaking in, I’m going to work on the band board glued up, sanded, and ready for paint. 

Here are the risers. I did a couple of things on here. On the bottom edge, I put a small back bevel, which leaves maybe an eighth of an inch on there. The whole back edge is tapered back off so that when the riser sits on the step, there’s no chance of some weird stuff happening in the back to prevent this from fully seating. I also put some curves on the back, which will weaken the board so it has less chance of warping and distorting. After being painted, these risers are going to be glued in and hopefully all set to go. 

Let’s move on to the stair treat next. I already pulled and did some epoxy work on this slab, because the tread is another piece of white oak. I got this log from the folks over at Wood From The Hood. This was a couple of logs with more metal inclusions in them than they wanted to deal with, and I cut them to test bi-metal blades against steel. Anyway, this is ready for for some surfacing and trimming. I’m going to cut it to rough length, cut the live edges off, and get it on the surfacer. 

It’s been about a week, and I’ve been letting this sit out here to see if it was going to distort, and it hasn’t moved at all, which is very cool. I’m going to take it into the shop and take it down to final thickness. I have about a half inch still to peel off, so the planer is going to get a workout.

Onto the bullnose. The easiest way to do that is to use a bullnose bit or a half round bit. You can do it in one pass, and you can ensure that the radius is a perfect curve all the way through. I’m going to be coming in from both sides instead of using the bullnose bit, so I’ll end up with a little bit of a flat spot. If I was doing a bunch of these, I would probably just buy the right bit, but I’m only doing six feet. My biggest round over bit is a half inch, which is going to get me really close. 

Bullnose turned out pretty good! Now I’m going to start fitting the treat into the stair framing. There’s a couple things to point out before I drop this in there. I’ve modified the bottom step to drop it down. When we framed these steps, we planned for the treat to be the same material as the great room, which is much thinner. So the rise heights didn’t really work out unless I made this white oak treat only a half inch thing, and I didn’t want to do that. So I recessed the subfloor down into the framing. 

The other detail we got wrong with framing these steps is that they were originally framed all the way out flush to this stub wall, and that’s not right. The leg of the bench for the breakfast nook gets mounted inset of this area. That will be two inches thick, so I needed the steps to get out of the way. 

The edge that’s against the appliance garage is what matters most right now, and it fits in there pretty nicely. I’m going to chop it to final length, figure out where the bench leg is going to be, make the cut for the leg, and then give this piece a final sanding. 

Next up is the jambs for the pantry wall. I re-checked my framing and it’s leaning a little bit, with the furthest distance from the wall at the bottom. This wall is going to be delineated all the way with a six-inch V-groove paneling, and my post is six inches as well, so I want my jamb to end at a six-inch increment. I will have to fudge my V-groove a little bit to end up exactly where it needs to be. I’m going to put some shims on there to get a nice plumb start for the jamb. 

Got it to fit pretty well, so I can go ahead and install the jamb now. 

After getting the riser cut to length, now I can do the install. 

Something I didn’t realize until recently is that this jamb is set by the location of the upper riser, because the vertical piece along the wall is going to butt into the riser, and that sets the location of the jamb.  

With some shims, and after moving that electrical box again, I can get this jamb installed. 

Coming back to the steps, I have some cove molding that needs to get installed onto the riser that transitions into the nose of the step. The riser underneath the white oak tread is going to be easy because there is plenty of support on the tread itself. But on the upper one, the cove molding is going to need to be secured pretty tightly, because it is going to be supported by the nosing of the flooring from the great room. 

Next I have some pieces of flooring to fit in this gap, and then the nosing for that upper tread. This extra flooring is stuff that I salvaged from the old steps. 

Then I tracked down this metal track, which the nosing clips into. But I can’t install until I get the baseboard above the top step set, so I’m going to move on to the next thing instead. 

I need to make the baseboard that goes along the floor by the pantry and the step. I also want to finish up the wall from the band board to the floor on the pantry wall, which you can see is all V-groove paneling. I will have to make one of the panels for that V-groove on the wall a little bit wider to account for the width of the casing. And while the shop is set up to make the V-groove paneling, I will also make the paneling for the pantry. 

Here is all the paneling and the baseboards. I think I got it all, but we’ll see. This all needs to get painted and installed. 

After getting that baseboard in, I could finish the steps. Here they are, ready to be walked on!

Then I can get the paneling and jamb installed for the pantry. 

And here is that doorway in place! I did have a little bit of an issue with getting the whole thing flat on the face. I don’t know how the framing got so screwed up, but there is a little twist in here that I couldn’t take out. So I’ll have to massage the door that goes in there. But I’m happy with how this is looking. Having that drywall covered up really changes the look of the whole thing. 

Thank you as always for reading along. I greatly appreciate it! If you have any questions or comments on the home remodel, please feel free to leave a comment. As always, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have. And till next time, happy woodworking!