In most cases, wood trim, door and window casing (interior), and other types of molding are purely decorative - icing on the cake so to speak.

Seeing as how they are meant to add a decorative touch, they just don’t look right when they don’t conform where they’re being applied because of surface inconsistencies. In many cases, you can tweak it by bending wood trim. There are two common methods of doing this:

• Building a PVC steam chamber. You can do this in your own wood shop.
• Back-cutting the trim. You can do this in many different ways; using a coping saw or a compound miter saw are common.

A common time to tweak trim is when installing baseboard after installing your floor. Why? Interior partitions (drywall walls) are rarely perfectly straight and you usually don’t even notice it until you go to nail up the base; then it becomes glaringly obvious.

I like to use a variety of methods to cope (pun intended ;-)) with this. First, if the wall curves in at a stud, I’ll nail the base up but use a shim so I can still set the nail, but then pull the shim and caulk the gap. Not perfect, but it splits the difference between beautiful and butt-ugly.

Chances are nobody will notice the hack, but they certainly would notice if the baseboard swooped in. That would detract from your new floor project.

Contrariwise, if the wall swoops out at a stud, you have no choice but to nail tightly to that stud, but you can let it float a bit on either side, once again caulking the gap.

Another trick is to first nail up the base and then nail quarter round to it at the bottom. It gives it a three dimensional look that detracts the eye from irregularities.

Using methods like these are what sets the craftsman apart from the rough framer. Think out of the box. Improve your DIY home improvement projects.