Short Stuff: Wainscoting: When Half a Wall is Enough

SPEAKER_05: With no fees or minimums, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Even easier than deciding to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with no overdraft fees, is it even a decision? That's banking reimagined. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N-A member FDIC. Hey and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in for Dave. SPEAKER_05: So this is Short Stuff. Let's go. Scoot, scoot, scoot. Sure. All right. Inside joke everyone. SPEAKER_06: We're talking about what I call wainscoting today. Apparently you can also pronounce it wainscoting. I've always said wainscoting and evidently either one of them are just fine. I saw also people in Chumlee and Haysbrook pronounce it wookiecat. SPEAKER_05: Look it up. Okay. If you don't know what we're talking about, we'll tell you right off the bat that wainscoting is a design feature. SPEAKER_06: It's been around for several hundred years. And if you've ever been in a house and you walk into, let's say, the dining room, SPEAKER_06: and instead of the entire wall being, let's say, drywall, maybe about halfway down or I think the general rule is what, two-thirds of the way down. Waist height. You will find and, you know, depends on the height of your wall though really because you want to do it different for like a 10-foot ceiling than like a 8-foot ceiling. It's quite a setup. It is. But if from there down you see like, you know, these – SPEAKER_06: any kind of wood paneling or these wood stripes, paneling board, something like that, not the rail itself, we'll get to that. That is what wainscoting is. Yeah, it turns out it's harder to explain than you'd think, you know. SPEAKER_05: I didn't think it was until I got going. First of all, that space that's waist height down on the wall is called the dado. So wainscoting basically covers the dado. If you have paneling that went all the way to, say, the ceiling, that's just called paneling typically. So that's one aspect of wainscoting that usually is universal. It's about waist height, okay? Yeah. And then it's often made of wood, but sometimes it's made to look like it's made of wood. Sure. It could just be raised quarter round or other kinds of molding, cut at 45-degree angles and fashioned into a square, a hollow square, and put in repetition on the wall and put a molding at the top and a molding at the top. And a molding at the bottom, paint it all one color that's a different color from the wall above it. You've got faux wainscoting as a DIY weekend project. Can I stop all the carpenters from writing you a letter? SPEAKER_06: Oh, gosh, did I say something wrong? SPEAKER_05: I think it would probably have to be half round. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. I was hoping that people wouldn't pick up on that because I thought it as I was saying it, but I'm glad you corrected me to keep it from emails. SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean, that's one way you can do it is literally individual strips of board. SPEAKER_06: Much more commonly these days, you can buy this stuff in large 4x8 sheets that are already grooved to look like those individual strips. Much, much easier. And it's a not too hard DIY project. I've done it plenty of times. Oh, really? And it can really, yeah, yeah, it's really easy. Well, we'll get to when it's not easy. But, you know, if you can cut something to fit a wall and you have like a what are those things called that you get like caulking out of a tube with? A caulk gun? Yeah, then you can do that. Some liquid nails, maybe even a little nail shooter. SPEAKER_06: Yeah, a little finishing nail gun. SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's as easy as that. It's really not hard. The word itself, I think by the time the late 1500s rolled around, was a verb meaning to line boards with paneling from supposedly maybe a middle Dutch or low German wagen shot. That's what I'm calling it from now on. I really like your wagen shot. SPEAKER_05: Its dining room feels much more formal thanks to the wagen shot you've installed here. Is that a DIY wagen shot job you did? Then you get hit over the head with a purse. That's right. And someone says, I never. So, I saw this old house said that it's Dutch in origin and it dates back to the 1300s, which is, it's really something. And imagine that it basically hasn't changed essentially in 700 plus years. SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and the cool thing about wain-scotting is that it's adaptable to a bunch of different styles. I mean, you're probably not going to see like a modern or super, super contemporary house with it. You may be able to get away with it if it's a certain kind. But a lot of other traditional, it can go with art deco, it can go obviously and was heavily used in the arts and crafts movement. But it's a fun way to break up the wall, but it originally served the purpose and still sort of does as protecting that lower wall. Yeah, I think that's what it was originally for and that still is what it does, especially if you have molding across the top of it that kind of finishes it and separates it from the wall above. SPEAKER_05: That's frequently referred to as a chair rail because it protects your wall from being banged up by chairs when people slide them out to get away from the table. I never knew that's what that came from. SPEAKER_06: Oh, really? SPEAKER_05: No, I mean, I always called it chair rail. SPEAKER_06: It can also be called dado rail because what you were talking about. But I never knew it was to protect against a chair. I had no idea. I love it. SPEAKER_05: Yeah, me too. It also technically could protect against Cramer in his pool cue if you have a pool table set up in a room that's too small to house a pool table. That's good. Should we take a break? Yes. SPEAKER_06: All right, we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Suzi Essman and I am Jeff Gerling. SPEAKER_00: Yes, you are. And we are the hosts of the History of Curb Your Enthusiasm podcast. SPEAKER_07: We're going to watch every single episode. It's one hundred and twenty two, including the pilot. And we're going to break them down. By the way, I'm Jeff Gerling. And we're going to watch every single episode. SPEAKER_00: It's one hundred and twenty two, including the pilot. And we're going to break them down. SPEAKER_07: By the way, most of these episodes I have not seen for 20 years. SPEAKER_06: Yeah, me too. We're going to have guest stars and people that are very important to the show, like Larry David. I did once try and stop a woman who was about to get hit by a car. SPEAKER_07: I screamed out, watch out. And she said, don't you tell me what to do. And Cheryl Hines. Why can't you just lighten up and have a good time? And Richard Lewis. SPEAKER_04: And he's a human being. He's helped you. SPEAKER_07: And then we're going to have behind the scenes information tidbits. Yes, tidbits is a great word. SPEAKER_07: Anyway, we're both a wealth of knowledge about this show because we've been doing it for twenty three years. So subscribe now and you could listen to the History of Curb Your Enthusiasm on iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you happen to get your podcasts. SPEAKER_02: Very special episodes. SPEAKER_02: A very special episode is stranger than fiction. It's normal people plopped down in extraordinary circumstances. It's a story where you say this should be a movie. Listen to very special episodes on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. SPEAKER_06: All right. So there are different kinds of wainscoting. There's beadboard wainscoting. You will notice those distinctive grooves, these narrow vertical planks. That's a very common one that you can buy in large sheets. That's what I thought it was like plain and simple. I did too, actually. But if you throw the word like flat panel wainscoting in front of it, then that is just another kind of smooth version. But I've always just thought of wainscoting as being the grooved kind. Yeah, the beadboard. SPEAKER_05: SPEAKER_06: Yeah. SPEAKER_05: There's so you said flat panel and you said that it's tough to get wainscoting or pull wainscoting off in a modern or contemporary house. You can, but it has to be very sleek and minimal. But you could do it. It's very daring. All of your friends in the design community are going to say, what a daredevil. But if you pull it off, they will fit you. They will have a party in your honor for it. That's right. SPEAKER_06: Great use of fit. Good word. So there's also overlay and raised panel wainscoting. And that's what you're going to find more of these days, which is a panel that you put over the wall. And I kind of thought that's like it has always been. But apparently, back in the day, it was actually recessed and built into the wall itself. Yeah. SPEAKER_05: So it would be even with the wall above it, right? Yeah. So that raised panel wainscoting, it's not the best name for what it describes, because from what I could tell, if you have what amount to cabinet doors on your wall in your dining room, but without handles, that would be considered raised panel wainscoting. It's like a square panel with a square routed into it, maybe like four inches from the top SPEAKER_05: and the bottom and the sides. And then that leaves another raised square in the middle of it, right? Yeah. That's raised panel. And it doesn't ring a bell with me. Yeah. SPEAKER_05: I mean, you saw it there, right? SPEAKER_05: Yeah. I just tried to describe it. And I didn't do that great of a job, but imagine like a square moat in like a raised panel, a raised square of wood, and there's a square moat two-thirds of the way in or a third of SPEAKER_05: the way in. Oh, my God. SPEAKER_06: How about this? Imagine if you had one of those cutting boards that catches the juice. Yes. And you screwed it into your wall. SPEAKER_05: Right. You just got a bunch of those and you lined them up evenly. There you go. That's a raised panel. Imagine this. Imagine going on the Internet and searching raised panel wainscoting and then clicking the images and looking at those. Oh, boy. SPEAKER_06: That's great. I love it. It was usually oak traditionally in the past. These days there's all kinds of other products, obviously. You can have MDF, which is medium density fiberboard, plywood. You know, in my opinion, kind of the cheap stuff you get at the big box store looks fine because you're going to end up staining or painting over it. But just make sure it is a stain grade if you are going to stain it. Otherwise, it might not look great. But you can always paint over it, which is what we've done. SPEAKER_05: Yeah. And that's how the DIY version where it's really just drywall covered with some, you know, half round or whatever molding that forms those squares to make it look like – what is it? Not flat. Raised panels. Yeah. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. That's really – it's not hard to do or no, it's not easy to do, but it's not super hard, especially if you already know your way around, you know, cutting tools and miter saws and, like you said, caulk guns and finishing nail guns. SPEAKER_06: Yeah. If you've got – if you're doing it in the big sheets, you're going to want to use a table saw. Where it gets difficult, and I said earlier, you know, it's sort of not too hard as a DIY project, where it does get difficult, and this is especially true in older homes, which we found out, you know, our house is from 1935. So there's not a straight wall or floor in our house, barely. And then when you go to put this beautifully, perfectly rectangular beadboard up, and then you've got a strip that's two inches wide at the top, and it goes down to about a third of an inch at the bottom, and you're just like, oh, my lord. SPEAKER_06: If you're good at that kind of stuff, it's not so hard, but if that is a challenge for you, cutting something on a long, long angle like that, it is a challenge for me, then it can get – dispiriting is the word I'll use. I saw what you wanted to do is you make your chair rail even. SPEAKER_05: That's all level. And then the baseboard – That's a good start. You shim and then caulk in. So if you really look close at the baseboard, you'd be like, oh, that part of the baseboard has a little dip to it. And you'd be like, get out of my house. I tried really hard to cover that up. SPEAKER_05: But that's the savior of DIY wainscoting projects. That caulk gun, because you're caulking in any grooves or whatever, and then paint, priming and paint, and then it does end up looking like just one solid group of paneled wood. It's really a neat thing. SPEAKER_06: Do you know the old construction term? SPEAKER_05: Measure twice, cut once. That's a good one. SPEAKER_06: And caulk and paint will make it what it ain't. SPEAKER_05: Oh, nice, Chuck. If that's not something to end Short Stuff on, I don't know what is. I think Short Stuff is out? SPEAKER_03: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to myHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.