Cased Opening Secrets: Full-Width Casing on BOTH Sides

In this video, Richard illustrates how to trim out a cased opening that is not symmetrical—meaning that there is more room on one side for trim than on the other. The solution with a cased opening is pretty simple: make the opening smaller to accommodate the trim. That solution won't always fly with doors, which usually need to fit the opening. However, the tutorial is worth watching because there are ALWAYS things we can learn from watching other professional finish carpenters solving problems.

TRANSCRIPT:

I'm going to be showing you guys one of the things that I feel like is the most important, especially in new construction, to get right. And that is: the casing width needs to be full on all of your doors and all of your cased openings.

What do I mean? I'm going to show you in this video how I got this cased opening to have a full profile on the left side and a full profile on the right side. If you get this wrong, it can be really bad and really an eyesore. And I've seen it so many times. So let's go through this.

Don't make this mistake that I see a lot of people make, and I'll show you how you can avoid it.

A widespread and underestimated issue

Real quick, before we get into the video, I did want to mention—as I was looking for pictures to show examples of how not to do it—I kept coming across Reddit threads where people were wondering, “How do you fix this?” I had no idea this was that big of an issue. I thought it was something I just noticed as a biased finish carpenter who doesn't like to see casing ripped down.

But apparently, this is happening a lot, and it needs to stop. If you look over to the right there: “How to trim this door, 6 months ago,” “How do I trim this door, 2 months ago,” “How do you trim the top of this door?” “Finished carpenters: how would you trim this door?” In this post itself: “How to trim this door in odd placement.”

Now, this particular picture looks like a remodel, so I'm not going to blame the builder. But most of the time, the ones I have seen have been in new construction, and it's a cluster of doors or a door too close to an adjacent wall.

A great architectural salvage find

This came about because I was in the architectural salvage yard hunting for stuff, as I usually do, and I came across this piece. This is a sweet piece right here. It's like an antique white oak with the TNG back. It's got the cleats for the shelves, really nice profiles, little cork molding on each side of these stiles.

I saw it and I knew what I was looking at. The guy had it listed for $630, and I was like, “That's a really good deal.” The material alone would be way beyond that, just to build it. And then my labor to do it—I was like, “That's a pretty good deal.” But I kind of haggled him. I said, “Is that the best you can do?” He said, “$575.” I was shocked.

I told him, “Let me think about it,” and then I just came back and said, “I'll take it right now for $500. If you'll do $500, the van’s here, let's load it up.” And he’s like, “That’s fine.” So $500—I mean, the way furniture is, you can't get a nightstand for $500.

Prepping the wall and cabinet space

It does need some work. I’ve got to build a cornice up there and then it needs its apron down here. This was the apron piece, so I can probably get that made—he had that kind of remnant there. And it's got some minor wear, but it’s all stuff I'm confident I can take care of.

Here's what we need to do: we know we want our casing to be touching this cabinet—the back of our casing against that side. I know my casing is 3½", but I also have a ¼" reveal on my jamb. So we're going to go to 3¾"—same thing.

If I want my casing to touch that wall like I want it to on the cabinet, I’ve got to pop that drywall off so that when I put my ¾" Windsor board down—that's going to be my jamb leg.

Creating the blocking and framing

For my blocking, I have a piece of 2x6 that I ripped down to 5". Took a ½" off that. Then we build up with these little spacer blocks to our 2½" on each side. So with these in, this is now acting like my framing and drywall. That way, whenever my casing laps onto this, it has something to hit up against.

Just want to make sure I'm flush on both sides—and I like that. If I'm flush up top, I just need to take my level and, as I come down, make sure I'm plumb. I know I'm good, so I really just have to bump against that.

Fastening the jamb

I like where this is. Got it exactly where I want it. I just need to attach it to the wall. I know I've got framing back there. I’ve got these 5" trim head screws—going to just sink them through here. This is a lot to go through, so these will be enough to grab it.

Trim head screws aren't really what you want to use for framing, but keep in mind this is not really framing. This is just blocking to build me out. Think of these as just like long nails. They're just going to hold it.

Preassembling and positioning the jamb

Nice. 51¼". Now I have all of my jamb parts cut. You can see a leg here, a header here. We’ve got our ½" clearance up top. Before I put these in the jamb, I’m going to preassemble them, bring them closer toward me, and just shoot them from the top down.

The edge of my top header board—I need to put my jamb vertical legs flush with the back of that. That should give me the perfect reveal, which is why we marked all those lines earlier to determine where this needs to end up.

Shimming and checking alignment

With the jamb now preassembled, we can set it up in position. I can take a 3½" block—a spacer—and put it right here. Then I can put my shims perfectly lined up with that. I just need to mark a quarter inch here in a couple of spots to give me something to go off of.

I’ve got this piece of scrap base—so if I pull this over to my quarter-inch marks, I know since this represents my casing, when I put it in it’s going to be flush against that cabinet and give me the proper reveal at a quarter inch.

This space back here just needs to be shimmed out. Once I like it, I can tack it in. I’ll do the same thing going down this whole leg.

Double-checking both sides

Before I get carried away, I need to check the other side to make sure that I've got that same quarter-inch. You can see I've got my quarter. Also need to make sure I'm flush with my blocking, which represents my wall in a typical situation. But I like that right there—loose side over here.

When I pull this up to it now, see—we’ve got our same quarter, and we're butted up against the wall. Same repetitive process all the way down each leg. Once I do that, I'll throw some casing up there. It’s going to look good.

Final result: a clean and intentional profile

So there we go. We have our nice clean reveal on each side of our opening here. We've got a full profile of that 3½" casing, which I think is just proper. Looks intentional—it is intentional. And the casing profile is not ripped down, which you see a lot of.

I see that a lot in new construction, especially where they try to squeeze all these areas in tight—like a bedroom, a bathroom, a little linen closet—and you've got like three or four doors all meeting up in the same area.

Trim details and final touches

But this looks amazing. I got that third piece on there—you can see it's the beaded casing, the Greek molding, and then the backband. I always put that little Greek piece on separately. This looks good. I got that nice crispy line all the way down—I like that.

When you come over here, this wall tapered out a little bit, so you can see I've got about an eighth-inch gap there. That’s fine—paint grade to paint grade—I’ll be able to fill this one.

Since I'm going to put wallpaper in this room eventually, I’m going to have to smooth these walls out. That'll float out and look nice.

Electrical adjustments and lighting plan

Another thing I'm going to have to do—you can see I’m too close here. I don't like that. This has got to come this way, which I do have room for. I'm going to make that a two-gang anyway, because currently this is the only light here, but I’m going to drop three little puck lights in there before I do the crown.

So they’re concealed, and that’ll be operated right here.

Conclusion: Why framing for trim matters

So there we go. Pretty simple solution to get that full profile width on each side of your cased openings and doors. The doors can be a little bit trickier—they need to be corrected in framing, like by blocking out like what I did here, and taking away drywall like I did.

But obviously, you'd want to do that correction before you even get to drywall. And you need to make sure it works with the rest of the layout of the house.

But coming from a trim carpentry, finish carpenter guy—I mean, I think it really needs to happen. I know a lot of builders are probably not going to want to move framing just to get the full profile of the casing, but it's something you're going to walk by every day and see that ripped profile and just shake your head and wonder why you didn’t correct this in the framing stage.

Hopefully you found this video useful. Let’s try to get all the door casings in America to be full width on both sides.