Hi,

I really like the look of my window's moulding - my walls are dark and the white trim is a beautiful contrast. I do not want to cover it with window treatments but my windows have no depth, whatsoever. The inside trim rests over part of the vinyl window track and is less than a 1/4" thick. Meanwhile, I have a big, fat window stool jutting out underneath about 3 1/4".

Being that I already have this 3 1/4" coming out from the wall with the stool, I am thinking about removing all the trim and building it out with some 2x4s in order to get the depth I need for inside-mount shades. Is this a bad idea?

Thanks in advance.

 

Please try to keep the language vanilla. Some pictures of what you have may help:
How to insert pictures.

 

It's your house... do what you want. If you add 2x4 then 1x4 as face trim, you would have room for an interior stop that is maybe 1 11/16" or so (Rip a 1x4 down the middle) to cover the inside edge of your 2x4. If that is wide enough for your interior mount blinds, that is.

For the outer side, you could make your own back banding to cover the side of the 2x4 and the side of the trim. Back banding is normally rabbeted to fit over the front edge of the face trim. So it looks like a 3/4" thick perimeter all the way around the face trim... but it's only 1/2" thick on the side that gets nailed over your 2x4 and trim. It would have to be about 2 5/8" wide. (Rip a 1x6 down the middle and notch/rabbet it, and round the front corners on the 3/4" thick side that faces forward).

 

Sorry, didn't mean to offend.

So my plan wasn't to replace the existing moulding, but to just remove it then build it out. I'm finding that there is almost 1/4" of space between the outside edge of the moulding and the wall, with insulation that was then covered by a silicon chalk...

 

I doubt it's chalk. Maybe caulk.

If you have a table saw, yeah, remove the casing and build it out as much as you like. But if you want to make it easy on yourself you might want to just buy some 1" thick stock (5/4") and rip it to the width you want... let's say 2 3/8" then apply that to the wall first and then put your casing back on top of that. (If 1" is enough)

 

Yes, caulk. Heh.

After removing the casing I see the reason for the space is that the actual window frame actually comes out past the drywall about 1/4". The walls aren't very thick.

Thank you for your suggestions, I will probably end up doing something along those lines.

 

That makes sense... you would just need to add a 1/4" more onto one side of the back side of your "shim", ripped off a 1x. Or if you don't want to rip they sell "lattice" that would be about the right size, it would just cost a lot more.

 

Hey InfiniteClouds... you mind posting a picture of how you solved this? I’m running into the same issue