It's a Base Thing

When we moved into our new apartment, a few things became immediately apparent.  I’m sure I’ll end up posting about a number of those things, but what I noticed almost instantly upon putting the furniture in place, were the base moldings.

Our old apartment, while being a perfectly fine place to live, was lacking in details to say the least.  Unlike the lovely moldings we have here, our old apartment had a brown plastic laminate strip covering where the walls met the carpet.  These new base moldings are quite attractive, but we now have an odd predicament with our furniture.  Any piece of furniture that is meant to be placed directly against the wall now sits about an inch away.  My husband thinks I’m crazy for caring, but we have one piece of furniture in particular that really bothers me: the wine bar.

  

This wine bar from Crate and Barrel is clearly intended to lean against the wall.  Not only does it bother me aesthetically, but also functionally.  It wobbles slightly when I’m opening a bottle of wine on it, which causes the glasses to clink.  I know you probably agree with my husband that I’m crazy for letting this bother me, but it's incredibly annoying!

I have currently come up with three possible solutions to the base molding dilemma.

Solution 1:

Get furniture that touches the wall at points above the molding.  There are plenty of options out there, but this shelving unit from CB2 is one of my favorites.

 

Solution 2:

Use base moldings that are flush with the wall.  In our future house, which I will design of course (because that’s what every architect dreams about), I will incorporate a base detail similar to the one used by Seattle architects, BUILD LLC.

Photos from BUILD LLC

Solution 3:

Deal with it.  This is our current solution. 

I no longer open bottles of wine on the wine bar, and it serves more as wine and glass storage than anything else.  At least it looks pretty.