I agree with you. I would tell the builder that this is substandard work and he better get you a new finish carpenter. It is not unusual for some of the baseboard to not be flush with the wall. But a good finish carpenter has ways around this. This guy doesn't seem to know enough tricks of the trade to call himself a finish carpenter. I am doing my own finish work in my house and use lots of tricks I've learned to make the job look A-1. Stick to your guns and withold that money until you are happy.

Tall baseboard will not be flush with the wall all over and does need caulking to look right if you are painting it.
As far as the nailing, I am not sure how many misses that they made, but that sounds unusual.
Baseboard is so easy to nail in a properly framed building where the studs are at 16" on center. Trim carpenters place the tape measure down on the ground and then nail at the marked 16" intervals, and that usually gets 95% of the nails into the studs. It is not done haphazardly unless this was a complete hack by a drunken sailor.
FYI, trim carpenters do not take as much time to cope joints and make perfect miters with painted trim for two reasons.
First, if it is a cheap composite or laminated trim, the material does not work as well with typical trim carpenter techniques to tighten joints and miters (coping, filing sanding). Secondly, they know that there is a much wider margin for error because the trim will be caulked and painted, which usually hides 99% of the issues with nail holes, miter and joint separations, baseboard away fro walls in between studs, etc. Third, a really good painter is required for painted trim to look right. It needs a lot of work, and it should be spray painted to do it right.

Kachinee, thanks for the info. I am hoping the caulking will help with the baseboard issues. This carpenter certainly did not do the 16" thing for the baseboard, though. Some nails are within an inch or two of one another (in one spot there are four nails like this) and along the bottom of the trim, there are lots of places where there are many feet between nails. The trim is poplar and will be brushed by a very experienced painter, who prefers brushing.

What course of action do you think we should take?

Thanks.

Thanks!

Irregular nailing might indicate bowed and twisted trim. Poplar does this sometimes and buying only selected-for-straight material can get expensive. I have often experienced this with trim made from my own lumber. Since it will be painted, it probably will turn out OK.

The *finished* product is what you should be more worried about.

Let them caulk and renail where it's not tight against the wall, then let them fill in the nail holes with putty before painting. My guess it will look fine when it's actually finished. Worrying about the number of nails they used is just nitpicking, unless they're charging you by the nail.

I watched the trim carpenter putting up crown molding in my house, and sometimes it took a while for him to get a nail that actually hit a stud. With an air gun nailer, it's quicker for them to just shoot another nail if the first one or two miss. He filled in every single nail hole and caulked all the way around. Looked great when he was finished.

Also, if you have long stretches of trim that you just don't think are going to lay flush against the wall, you need to take a long (4 or 5 ft) level and hold it against the drywall to make sure the drywall isn't bowed out. What you think is poorly fitting trim could actually be drywall that isn't perfectly flat. It almost never is. Those gaps simply need to caulked.

Relax, it will look fine when it's all completely finished.

the problem could be more of a framing issue than a trim issue, trim that doesn't touch the wall means the wall is not even not the trim. This is generally always the case to some degree and caulk is used to finish the edge of the trim to the wall. The haphazard nailing could be poor work by the trimmers or the result of off center framing. There are finish carpenters out there that will make every miter line up, every joint perfect, so that no putty is needed to finish these joints, etc. but these guys are very expensive and very slow, cause this takes a lot of time.

Take a window for example: You install the trim around the window but there is one side that doesn't touch the wall because the wall has a dip in it at that point. If you push the trim to the wall you will offset the miter joint at the corner, so you leave the trim in place and caulk the trim to the wall. In other words let the painters do their job, and you'll never know these holes/cracks are there.