My wife had me do a board and batten look on one of the walls. It's an old house with plaster walls and a straight board has revealed that the wall is bowed in. Over a length of 5'9" it's in 3/8th" in the middle.
How do you deal with this? Do I try to make it match the contour of the wall or leave it straight and put wood filler in behind it or what? If so, I'll need to put filler behind the verticals too? Or if I'm matching the contour should I use screws instead of liquid nails?
I am not much of a carpenter, but my gut tells me to trace the curve of the wall on the trim piece and cut the trim to fit the wall.
Caulk and paint.
Scribe it and cut with jig saw like video or use caulk. I'd do caulk.
Maybe a piece of 3/8" 1/4 round molding?
Toyman! said:Caulk and paint.
This. But make sure you use acrylic caulk, which will take paint, not silicone which won't.
When doing floor trim, I'll push it in toward the wall as much as possible and then hit it with the nail gun. If you put your nails in at angles, they will hold quite a bit of tension.
But I think floor trim is designed to do that. If you have a piece of hardwood or something it could be hard.
3/8 is not really a lot of bend, so I'd probably leave it and get some caulk.
Do your best, caulk the rest
If faced with that I would caulk and paint also. In the 60's I worked with a talented high end cabinet builder. He emphasized that you must do what is pleasing to the eye. I also learned early almost all houses are not square/straight, but the edges of the cabenets are.
In your case the edge of the wood would be a visible line. So keeping it straight and sharp will be more pleasing than bending it. That edge would be more prominent than the caulk/sheetrock line behind it.
YMMV
I(a professional carpenter) personally would scribe it and get it closer before caulk otherwise the caulk will shrink and crack and pull away and be ugly in a year
The wife wanted it, let her decide. Next time she will leave you alone and you can continue to play in the garage.
(Professional carpenter)
I agree with Patrick and what is stated above- scribing it to the wall is the "right" answer. It is, however, a little more difficult.
So, the simpler solution would be to add a small 1/4 round on top of the chair rail. Whatever you do, keep the leading edge straight (or you will emphasize the crooked wall)
The vertical joints below are not very visible- caulk those.
BTW- nice job. That's a pretty good looking wainscoting
BTW, when I am doing a long scribe like that, I prefer to do it freehand (no fence) on a table saw, not a jigsaw.
A jigsaw makes short choppy jagged cuts. The table saw makes a long sweeping curve. Plus, I can set the saw with a slight bevel on it, so only the top face of the board touches the wall when it's installed (makes a super tight joint)
But that's only when I am fussing too much!! Haha!
I've built a few houses in my day, I'd absolutely caulk and paint that.
As said, scribing will give you the nicest finish.
If you're just going to caulk it as is, grab some foam backer rod for the large gap section. It'll reduce how much caulk you have to try and squeeze into the gap and also reduce the chances of it slumping/ sinking while it's drying
Countersink a hole at each stud and run a 2 1/2 deck or drywall screw and pull it to the wall.
Fill in the screw holes with plastic wood, caulk, paint and walk away.
Nail to wall, skip the caulk.
Scribe it, fill any holes with filler, sand everything, Caulk all the seams where the wood meets the wall, then paint.
P3PPY said:
What's going on with the markings on your tape measure?
NOT A TA said:Maybe a piece of 3/8" 1/4 round molding?
1/4 round is the berkeleying devil
I went with the majority and caulked and painted. Well, I painted and then caulked because my wife couldn't wait to see how it looked and started painting early. I need some filler material for the bigger gaps so I left them alone for now, but the rest is coming along nicely.
toothpick for size reference.
We decided against 1/4 round less so because of its evil spiritual properties but more so because the rest of the trim in the house is not deviled-- er, beveled.
That tape measure is awful and I hate it. One side is inches up to feet and then starts over again at foot + inches and almost cost me a stick of trim last night because 8" != 8" + 1 foot. The other side is tenths of a foot up to one foot and then starts over at foot + tenths of a foot, which I've found even more useless. It was free and I think I did the person a favor by taking that reel of confusion out of her house.
To be honest, it's probably the best wood work I've done, not the least of which because I just replaced my old miter saw after I discovered that ZERO WAS NOT ZERO. I'd lost confidence in my ability to do minor projects before I discovered the defect, so this is a nice step back into it. It's not perfect but I hate finish work and my wife doesn't care enough either, so the corner piece is going to stay where it is.
Thanks for the help and advice. I'll be back for more.
EDIT:
Ohhhhh yeah. I also learned something else. Apparently it's not Step 1, compress brake calipers, Step 2, hold together household interior wood project. I discovered that there should be another step between those two:
In reply to gearheadmb :
Engineer tapes have .10s of a foot. Makes doing maths a lot simpler.
In reply to birdmayne :
Simpler for the engineers.
Not simpler for field personnel who have to keep switching back and forth between architect dimensioning in feet/ inches and civil engineering in tenths of a foot.
Throw in a little metric now and then, just to spice things up.
In reply to P3PPY :
Throw that tape measure out now. You will feel good about it.
I also refuse to use metric/inch tapes, because they are stupid and irritating, and if you need a metric tape, go buy a metric tape.
SV reX said:In reply to birdmayne :
Simpler for the engineers.
Not simpler for field personnel who have to keep switching back and forth between architect dimensioning in feet/ inches and civil engineering in tenths of a foot.
Throw in a little metric now and then, just to spice things up.
Quoted for truth. I've had to use all three doing layouts on previous jobs and it gets way too complicated.
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