Are there any other houses of the same era in your neighborhood? Perhaps you can get an invitation to see their trim. How about house museums or those on holiday or garden tours? Or open houses that are for sale? Do you have a local historical society that can advise you?

Local comparisons are the most reliable if you're trying to replicate something that is totally missing, IMO.

But don't lose sight of the fact that if yours is a farmhouse, the trim and other features won't be the same as they might have been on a 'town' house. I agree that local comparisons (perhaps even church records, with pix) are a great way to go.

gw, I also have a 1928 colonial home that has some very simple molding throughout that I have not seen elsewhere. The foundation of the profile is what you already have 1X4 pieces of wood, not mitered but butt jointed. Then wood corner guard molding (see profile below) is applied around the perimeter and is mitered at the corners.
Like I said very simple, and just enough of a shadow line to make it stand out. Plus I'm sure you can find the moldings locally at any big box store.

Here is a link that might be useful: Corner Guard

Hi there, gardenwebber. We have a 1913 bungalow, so a little older than your home, but still pretty simple. I am attaching a link to an "old moldings" article from Old House Journal that I saw this month. Our molding is like the first one in the article. My husband has replicated it in the kitchen and bath in our house (where the prior molding was plain 1x4's butted up). I think, you are correct those were used in the less formal areas of the house. We were able to order the crown molding and the smaller round molding from a lumber yard. We do have a handy BIL who ran a router over the side casings for us, because they are rounded over on the outside edge. DH stained and finished them. Not too bad, I don't think, as far as DIY work goes. HTH. -Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: OHJ article

If its a 1920s farmhouse I imagine it could be pretty simple - just get the proportions right & not too skimpy - window/door trim about 4 1/2- 5" wide, baseboard ~ 6-8". You could go to a salvage yard and if not enough for your house, get a sample to copy. My house (and several others from the 1910-1920 era I've lived in) has pretty simple rounded edges - in kitchen & bath just flat baseboards with bevel edge, no fancy fluting or anthing.

Although my house was built in 1900, it's a very simple little vernacular house in an old mill town, and here at least the vernacular "unstylish" houses like farmhouses and factory workers' houses didn't change much at all in the decades before and after the turn of the century. Both upstairs and down the trim is all very simple butt-jointed boards and I really like the way it looks. The plainness suits the house very well but the width has some "oomph" to it so it doesn't look pitiful. The vertical bits are 5" wide; headers are 6 1/2", a hair thicker and about half an inch wider that the verticals; the window aprons are 4". Baseboards are over 9" downstairs (ceilings just short of 9') and 7" upstairs (8' ceilings). Upstairs baseboards are three-part, a wide flat board topped with two smaller moldings, upstairs they're just a plain flat board. The living room has a skimpy picture molding that's about 2" in profile; even if it is original it doesn't look in proportion with the rest of the millwork so we will probably replace it with something a little wider but still very simple.

Here's a picture of one corner of the living room from before we moved in, since the house isn't very presentable right now. :-) It's not too easy to see with the white-on-white paint scheme, sorry; try not to see the vinyl windows! All that millwork has to be stripped since there are so many layers of paint built up and previous owner also painted right over chipping and peeling areas after just brushing off the loose stuff so it looks terrible (he was also daft enough to use a FLAT paint, too, so if you look at it wrong it gets dirty and doesn't clean for crap). We've also been told by someone who lived here decades ago that the trim was dark when she was a girl, and we've found dark stain under a few chips.

In our previous house, which was fairly new but soulless and in need of a bit more old-fashioned flavor, we used a flat casing backbanded with a simple piece of square stock. Had it been an older house I would have used a wider casing on the doors and windows but I didn't want to go overboard. The only photo I can find with a real close-up of how the casings were done is this one from the bathroom:

{{!gwi}}

If you want a fancier top to doors and windows like in items 1 and 2 in the OHJ article linked above but aren't into piecing the thing together yourself, Vintage Woodworks has one nice simple header that would look great with plain-stock casing.

Here's a suggestion using stuff from the big box stores. The parts are approximations of a little 1920's 4 Square (the house with the pyramid roof) I once lived in: simple casings.

These casings were done by a gentleman who was not a carpenter, but was also not in a hurry.

the sides were what is sometimes called 'belly band', a casing with a round part in the middle (the belly) and straight square edges on each side (the bands). Our local big box had lots of it in the racks. Belly band was also used for the apron below the sill, but cut at the edge of the belly (so it wasn't as wide), a nice touch, a nice shadow line, just slightly different from the sides.

The top piece was nominal 1"x6" pine stock, each piece chosen by hand to get good stock. They were just a bit wider and deeper than the belly band, as they would have been in the '20's ( again that shadow line). They were cut just a hair's breadth (1/8"?) wider than the side pieces for a neat and subtle look, again the traditional look.

Then it was all painted, as the belly band was white composite already. Looks fine!

This is real "DYI" friendly. Our old farmhouse had been remodeled and had pretty ugly cheap trim in most places, so we came up with something on our own.

We used 1x pine boards and some MDF trim to make the caps for the doors and windows.

Here are some assembled and painted

We bought MDF for the uprights, and used pine for the ledges

(removed the ones the window came with to make the bottom one piece). We used 1x6 pine for the baseboard, with the same MDF for the cap. The corners are pine blocks cut for 2x4 scraps (they are wider than 1") caped with a mitered corner of the same trim.

We just installed the trim on the windows this morning - I'll post pictures of that later. I really like the look and it's not that hard to do if you have a decent miter saw.

The best part is no mitered corners above the window/doors to deal with!

In our living/dining area, we went with a more formal look, stained oak. We framed out the three windows in the bay to make it look like one unit.

This shows the detail a bit more

This is my favorite part of the room (never mind the mess, we are still living in a construction zone!)

It does not bother me to have different trim in different rooms.

Cathy

There will be a piece of trim installed under the window ledge. Somehow we forgot to buy that when we got the rest of the boards for the trim. I'll also be painting the windows when the weather is warm enough to take the sashes out.

I've got to get back to painting. Carpet will be coming soon and I want to have all the painting done and the wall paper border up before then.

Cathy

Hi, I live in a 1925 dutch colonial. Some rooms have the original trim and others have the modern replacement stuff (and some plastic garbage). The original is red oak butted with a mitered edge cover as mentioned in the other posts. We couldn't find anything at the big box stores that looked the same and their oak was expensive. We ended up going to a small wood milling place, picking something that was a bit fancier than the original but could be put on as one piece. They turned out to be cheaper than the big box stores. Since then I have found several lumber yards that are cheaper (over 50%) than the big box stores so we even get the standard stuff (shoe and 1/4 rd) at the small places. Anyways, it looks great with the new "red" oak trim. The original owners would be pleased.