DIY Gingerbread Fretwork Trim
© Stephie McCarthy
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Making our own gingerbread fretwork was not hard or expensive.
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We used spindles from #Lowes that were on sale (49¢ each), plus 6 pieces of 1"x2" for a about of $30 in materials.
Now this 60-year old porch will match the front of our Victorian House much better! Here's the progress so far. This summer we'll do the caulking, painting, and add more trim.
Adding two posts and cutting back some of the fiberglass facade, plus a lot of sprucing up happened first. But it's fun to look back … here's the porch "before".
Use the guides on your saw (or blocks taped into place) so that each spindle can be cut to the exact same length. We made our spindles 7.5", cutting the bottoms off first, and then the tops, assembly-line style.
The length and spacing of your spindles is a design choice, but most important is consistency in size and spacing. We used a ruler and made a pencil mark where each spindle would be glued to 1"x2" boards that were cut to fit between our posts.
Some of our segments had 6" spacing, others 5-3/4, more or less. But each segment was spaced consistently.
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When the glue has dried, nail the spindles to the edge piece which has been cut to fit your opening.
Now we can attach the fretwork to the porch.
We attached the fretwork to the beam without the bottom edge to make sure our nailgun would fit between the spindles.
Closeup of the bottom edges that were added last.
We put a dab of glue on the bottom of each spindle before we nailed on the bottom edge.
Finished!
Well … except for the caulk, paint and some matching trim elsewhere. But what a difference this has made to this old porch addition.
The link to the door gingerbread is below!
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