If you've noticed a gap at the corner of a door casing or a crack where baseboard meets the wall, you're not alone. On Cape Cod, wood moves with the seasons. Summer air off the water is humid, and a heated house in January can be drier than a desert. Wood swells and shrinks across those months, and joints that weren't built to handle it open up.
The first fix is time. Trim should sit in the room where it will be installed for several days before it's cut, so it reaches the same moisture level as the house. Trim installed straight off a cold truck will shrink once it warms up indoors.
The second fix is joinery. Outside miters should be glued as well as nailed, so the two pieces move together instead of pulling apart. Inside corners should be coped, which means one piece is cut to the profile of the other, instead of mitered. A coped joint can move slightly without showing a gap.
Finally, trim has to be fastened into framing, not just drywall. Casing nailed only to drywall can twist as the seasons change. We locate studs and jambs and nail into solid wood so the trim stays where it was set.
If your trim has already opened up, many joints can be re-glued, re-nailed, and touched up without replacing the whole run. Call us for a free look.