Mitered Corners

As you know, I worked in Bubba's room this past weekend.   I was able to tackle his bulletin board and frame it out, which I talked about here, and something that has been on my To-Do List for quite a while now.

Mitered corners can appear to be easy and yet seem self explanatory, but they can also be very tricky.  Especially when the piece of wood you are working with has some detail or design to it.  You really need to pay attention and remember what you are doing.  The Mister, thankfully, taught me how to miter corners a while ago for another project.   We happen to have a miter saw, but you can also use a miter box with a hand saw to do these cuts as well.

I had cut and placed a piece of wood up on the wall.   Lined it up the way I wanted it along the bulletin board.  I cut both of my corners at a 45 degree angle.

I measured from the inside, of the piece of wood.

Here is the tricky part.  As you can see in the picture below I was laying it out, trying to make sure everything was going to line up flush before I cut the other side.  I didn't want to have to caulk any parts of the corners.  I wanted them to meet flush, but as I was laying out another piece of trim, they just weren't lining up.  Do you see why? 

If you look closely at the picture, you will see the ever so slight design of the wood is actually on the outside of the trim.  I was using it with the chunkiest part on the inside; closest to the bulletin board.  Good thing I double checked all of that, before I made any of my cuts.  It was a lot of up and down the stairs, to and from the garage, but it was worth it.

Always remember to measure twice, or three, or four times, so you can cut once.

This is how you want your corners to line up, but as you can tell in this picture, this is pre-putty, sanding and painting, and that line you see is actually my pencil mark for when I wanted to make my cut.  This is a very raw picture, but gives you the idea of the 'rights' and 'wrongs' to mitered corners.  When they are done correctly, they look beautiful.  Your corners ARE supposed to match up and look seamless.

This little corner of his room is turning out quite nicely.  Might add a little chair or make a bean bag or something for him over there, so he could read, or relax.  Who knows!

Have you ever had to miter corners before?  How did you do?  Any woodworking projects that you are currently working on?  I have another one in the works and will be up on the blog soon!  Stay tuned!