|
Home Improvement Ideas from Ring's End.
Why wainscot (pronounced weyn-skoht)? Wainscot, wainscoting, or wainscot paneling is a traditional interior architectural detail which is a popular finish treatment that most commonly extends from the floor to chair rail height or 34 inches off the ground. Wainscoting has been around for centuries, it was initially used in England and other European countries as a way to improve interior comfort by covering cracks and gaps stone house walls. Regardless of the term you use, wainscot can turn any room into a showcase of elegance and beauty.
Today, the wainscot expresses creativity as well as craftsmanship, enhancing hallways, bathrooms, dining rooms, kitchens and other parts of the house. A wainscot wall treatment also has important practical value: It can absorb impacts, showing much less wear and tear than gypsum wallboard, so it's well-appreciated in high-traffic areas like entryways and mudrooms.
Ring's End has a tremendous variety of wainscot paneling and trim to maximize your wainscot design possibilities. You'll also find plenty of wainscot and moulding displays at the Ring's End Paint & Design Center in Norwalk. Builders and homeowners alike often like wainscots made using 4x8 sheets of beadboard paneling, which is affordable, easy to install, and available in different beadboard widths.
For a more custom appearance, an experienced finish carpenter can create a frame-and-panel wainscot, which can have a variety of panel treatments (see the photo above). Regardless of what design is used, one of the biggest challenges will be gracefully incorporating existing electrical outlets, HVAC registers, baseboard heaters and window and door casings into the design.
If you're interested in adding a wainscot to a room, it helps to learn some finish carpentry lingo. Most wainscot designs contain the following elements (described from the top down):
Chair rail. This moulding runs along the top of the wainscot, and gets its name from its function: to protect other parts of the wall from wayward chairs. Different chair rail profiles are available, and some chair rails are made up of more than one type of molding. But all chair rails project out beyond the rest of the wainscot.
Paneling. The largest section of the wainscot is sometimes referred to as the field. It can be made from paneling, tongue-and-groove boards, or frame-and-panel assemblies.
Base or baseboard. By forming a strong, broad base, this moulding visually anchors the wainscot to the floor. A baseboard can be made up from a single piece of trim, or it can have two parts: a contoured cap resting on top of a square-edged board. Shoe. The shoe moulding isn't always included in a wainscot, just as it's sometimes omitted from standard baseboard trim. The functional purpose of the shoe is to cov er gaps between the bottom edge of the baseboard and the finished floor. It's a common mistake to use quarter-round molding for the shoe. True shoe molding has a taller profile that always fits against the baseboard.
Pegs plus paneling. Adding a peg rail between the chair rail molding and the beadboard paneling is a useful custom detail for a wainscot located in a mudroom or entry foyer.
|
