Design Confidently, Live Comfortably
  The most admired historic homes were built with thick walls of stone, brick, or hand-troweled plaster -- the cost of which is nearly prohibitive today. Instead, interior walls in most of our homes are made of gypsum board over wood studs, making
Fine homes use heftier materials, so the larger the trim, the more substantial and well crafted the entire room appears. On the shelves of the lumberyard, alongside the insubstantial moldings, you'll find solid square-edged pine and other woods such as Douglas fir, oak, and poplar. Tall baseboards -- say, 8 inches high by 3/4 inches thick -- are far more impressive than undersized decorative ones. A 4-inchby 3/4-inch flat board is all that's needed to trim the walls around windows and doors, and it can be complemented by chair rails or picture rails of the same dimensions. Wider trim -- up to 7-1/2 inches -- can also be used to great effect, especially on tall, wide doorways and passageways. A tried-and-true architectural wall treatment, vertical wood wainscoting with a simple molded (known as a beaded) edge can be applied to walls at chair-rail height, about 3 feet from the floor, or at picture-rail height, about 6 feet high. Beadboard can be made of solid wood and applied one board at a time -- a labor-intensive process, which adds to the cost. If you plan to paint the walls, the same look can be achieved for much less by using 4-foot by 8-foot sheets of "beadboard" manufactured by cutting a similar molding profile into plywood or MDF, a material much like Masonite. Both give walls a touch of a real wood-grain surface, even when painted. Another idea is to cover just one wall with wood to greatly enhance the character of an interior. NEXT: Give Flat Ceilings Depth and Drama BACK: Classic Flooring that Won't Break the Bank |
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PHOTO: ERIK KVALSVIK |
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