Wainscot/moulding conundrum

[Michael Faurot]

SWMBO says she wants either some type wainscot or perhaps just a chair rail style moulding installed in a bedroom. Shouldn't be a problem, I've done moulding many times before and I think I can handle wainscot okay.

What I haven't dealt with before is these houses that with rounded outside corners on the walls. With regard to doing just a moulding, I can imagine the solution is to get moulding that has rounded corner pieces available. My recollection on this is fuzzy, but I don't believe I've ever seen that at any of the big box stores. That's ideally where I'd want to get it, but if Home Depot/Lowes don't carry this stuff, what type of store does?

Now, with the wainscot, I suspect the way to deal with a rounded outside corner is just turn it into a regular 90 degree outside corner and not try and make the wainscot follow the radius of the corner. So it seem like it would be necessary to use something like a piece of corner moulding to cover the rounded corner, which would then give the wainscot something to attach to at that point. Is this the way it's typically dealt with? Is there a better way?

Thanks.

[DanG]

Scroll to the bottom of this page:

TrimTex makes great drywall products. and have wood corners ready to work with your situation.

______________________________ Keep the whole world singing . . . . DanG (remove the sevens) [e-mail]

[DanG]

I'm sorry, I should have read more. The wood moldings are made and available here:

Midwestern wood products.

______________________________ Keep the whole world singing . . . . DanG (remove the sevens) [e-mail]

[Mike O.]

If you can find a round corner that matches your chair rail of course that's the best way to go. For an alternative we often will turn the molding around the round corner with two 45 degree angles. This requires a 22 1/2 degree cut on the end of the pieces coming from each direction with a third small piece, to make the turn, with the same 22 1/2 degree cut on both ends. This certainly is not a round corner but does look much softer than just running a square turn with your molding. This also eliminates the large hole (by turning it into 2 small holes) left between the back side of your molding and the round corner when running the molding square.

The same thing can be done with a wainscot but might be quite a challenge if using 1/4" material on the walls.

Mike O.

[Michael Faurot]

O, I see the possibilities now. :) Yes, that's interesting. It looks like by using one of the "Bullnose Corner Blocks" you'd put that on the rounded corner and then butt the moulding or wainscot to it.

Thanks for the tip!

[Michael Faurot]

That's certainly a possibility for this situation. I had been thinking if I did just bring two pieces of moulding together against the rounded corner to form a sharp 90, it would leave a big hole behind it that would need to be filled somehow. Doing two 22-1/2 degree cuts with a little filler block does sound better. What do you typically wind up filling the two holes with, behind the filler block? Are they small enough that they could just be filled with regular chaulking, without looking weird?

I'll bet, if the moulding is thick enough, I could also use a rounded rasp on the middle of the little filler block to get a tigther fit as well. Maybe even eliminate the holes all together.

Thanks for the tip and ideas!

[Mike O.]

I think you'll find that the two little holes on the back side will be very small. If your painting the molding caulking will do the trick otherwise, you may not need anything. It's a little bit tricky to get the first one but after that you will have a good idea of what to do. The trick is that the pieces coming from each direction have to hang past the start of the radius just a small amount to make the little piece work. You can experiment with any kind of scrap to save your molding. The most common round corner we see around here requires that the small piece be about 9/16" across the back side between the two angles. Cut that piece and a couple of short pieces with 22 1/2 cuts on opposite ends and hold all three together at the corner. You will see how far the wall pieces have to hang past the start of the radius. The 9/16 piece may not work if your corners are a different size. Good luck.

Mike O.