This is easily one of my favorite DIY projects to date! It was easy, and it didn’t require the use of a saw. Which meant I wasn’t running down into my basement 100 times to cut the trim. So what did I use? Miter shears! I used these miter shears from Amazon. They allowed me to cut the PVC trim easily and accurately. I got all of my trim from Home Depot. It’s called PVC screen molding. As of the date I’m writing this its going for $3.58 per 8 foot piece. So not only is this project easy, but it is affordable as well. Easy affordable project that makes a big impact thats what we all want! So let’s get into it.
First thing I did was measure my walls. I could tell you my measurements but they would be very different from yours since we all have different length hallways in our home. I decided based on the width of my walls that I wanted to do two boxes on each of them. I then decided to use a piece of scrap wood that I had on hand as a spacer to make things go quickly and easily.
I created this diagram as an example to show the spacing that I chose. I made the space from the outer box to the walls, ceilings, floor, and other box, the same width of 4 1/4 inches. I used a different spacer I had at home which was 2 1/4 to create the space between the outer box and the inner box. Using a spacer made the whole process go so much faster and smoother.
So once I had the spacing figured out it was simple.
You take the width of your wall, and subtract how many spacers you have, ( for me I had 3 which totaled 12 3/4 inches) and then divide that number by how many boxes you want. So I divided by two.
I used my 18 gauge brad nailer to install the trim and this project just cruised along!
These are the miter shears I used. They make cutting this trim so efficient. This is very easily a beginner DIY project!
I used this 18g Ryobi brad nailer that I ordered off of Amazon. It’s battery operated and very easy to use. I mentioned earlier that I used a spacer and this is what I mean. For the top I used the larger spacing trim that I had and marked it. I then attached one corner of the top trim with my brad nailer and then used a level to nail the rest in. Once I knew that was level it was easy to do the sides of the box using a level as well. I didn’t use the spacing trim for most of the outer boxes because walls and ceilings can be janky and aren’t guaranteed to be level. So due to this I used a long level for most of it. However the inside box just flew up! Since I took the time to make sure the outside. box and knew it was perfectly level and just used this spacing trim and then nailed it all in.
At one point I did run into a power outlet! Which was no problem. To solve this I just used the trim and made a box slightly bigger than the outlet. You can see in the picture how it looks better and more finished this way so the trim wasn’t just running into the outlet.
I love how it turned out! I feel like it added so much to this hallway without breaking the bank. What do you think? Would you try putting up this budget friendly DIY wall trim?