Rant: People using finish nails for baseboard returns instead of glue

I was on a job in Nashville last month and had to redo a whole room because the last guy nailed every return instead of gluing them. Returns pop loose after a season of humidity changes if you just nail them, every time. I learned that from an old carpenter I worked with back in 2018 who made me glue every single one and it never failed. Has anyone else dealt with this on trim jobs?

2 comments

2 Comments

faithf772d ago

Oh jeez, that reminds me of a buddy of mine who thought he was saving time on a trim job in his own house. He nailed all the returns in his dining room and bragged about it. Fast forward maybe 8 months and his wife is texting me a photo of this gap between the baseboard and the return, like a quarter inch wide. He had to pull out the whole section and redo it with glue while she stood there giving him the look. Nails just don't hold up to the swelling and shrinking, man. He learned his lesson real quick.

reese_taylor693d ago

I had a guy once tell me finish nails were fine for everything (he was wrong about a lot of stuff). Then I watched a whole baseboard return pop off in a client's house six months later and had to eat the cost of fixing it.