Wainscoting Suppliers-Manufacturers

There are hundreds, probably thousands of manufacturers of wainscoting in the USA. The trouble is, many are small shops. In fact, a really good finish carpenter armed with the right tools can make his/her own on the jobsite! I know because I did it about 20 years ago.

At the time of publication of this Bulletin, I could only find two companies that offer any type of acceptable design and fabrication services that are homeowner friendly. I did a Web search using various search engines, but the results were dismal.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is the difference between the two companies. One of them happens to be located in my city - Cincinnati, Ohio. This company's product is similar in many ways to traditional wainscoting. They use solid wood rails and stiles, veneer covered raised panels, and then additional hold down moldings that frame the panels.

The other company is located in Portland, Maine. Their system is more environmentally friendly and has fewer parts. This is the system I am using in my dining room! The finish level of the product is superb.

Click here to watch a video on installing wainscoting.

• Hyde Park Lumber Company
  Hyde Park Raised Panel System
• New England Classic Interiors

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Cutting and installing woodwork is not easy, especially if you want it done right. You need to have a high level of hand-eye coordination and you need to have some high quality tools. If you think that you are going to produce expert miters using a $19.99 plastic miter box and saw, you are crazy. I know some carpenters who just can't do it. They simply do not possess the level of precision required to make perfect joints.

Millions of Words

There are hundreds of books, articles and videos out there that try to show you how to install woodwork. Some of the finest books on the subject are published by the Taunton Press. They also produce Fine Homebuilding and Fine Woodworking magazines. You can read many of these and read all I have to say, but the bottom line is that you must jump in and start to hack away and practice. Of course you need the right miter box before you begin.

Tools - Ouch!

If you are serious about installing baseboard, casings and crown molding, you need a good miter box saw. The minimum saw you need is one with a 10 inch diameter blade. It will work fine for all but the largest moldings. These tools will cut off your fingers in a heartbeat, so you must use them only when you are alert and after you have read all of the warnings.

You will also need a razor knife, a rasp (a wood file), a coping saw and some wood chisels. All of these tools could easily set you back nearly $400. A good source of tools online is Coastal Tool Company.

A Simple Frame

I feel the best place to start is to make a simple rectangular picture frame out of standard door casings. You need to cut 4 pieces of trim - say 10 inches long - when measured from the outside corners of the 45 degree miter joints. If you cut them right, then when fitted together there will be no gaps. Make a mistake of just 1/16th inch on any one cut or measurement, and you will have problems.

Laying Flat

You may cut perfect miter joints for door or window casing that fit together fine on a workbench but when placed on a wall, the joint opens up. This often happens because the wall surface next to the door or window jamb is not in the same plane. The rough studs behind the drywall may be twisted.

Keep in mind that when you look at a mitered wood joint, only the finished surface area of the trim needs to touch tightly. If the wood just below the surface was hollow or didn't touch, who would be the wiser? You can remedy this problem often by back cutting the miter joint. In other words, use a razor knife to trim away the wood on the saw cut edge of the miter joint. Be careful as you whittle this wood with a sharp razor knife! Try a practice one to see what I mean. You will be amazed at how this allows you to create very tight miters.

Baseboards

These give people lots of problems, especially in new drywall jobs. The corners often look good when you fit the wood, but after they are nailed, there is a large gap at the bottom of the joint. Why? The drywall for 99 percent of all jobs is hung horizontally. The tapered edge of the drywall at the floor level is often never filled by the drywall finisher. To make matters worse, sometimes there is a hump of mud at the bottom that creates all sorts of problems. You have to chisel out any humps of mud and if the tapered edge is not filled, you may have to place thin shims at the bottom of the baseboards to get it to come together perfectly. Woodwork installation requires lots of patience, don't you agree?

Things Must Be Square

If you are installing casings around doors and windows and are cutting ordinary 45 degree miters, then you better make sure the door or window frame is perfectly square. If it isn't, your 45 degree cuts will be off, or when your miter joints are tight, your reveal along the edge of the jamb will be off. You can use a framing square to check these things, but straight pieces of trim cut at 45 degree angles will work as well. No two trim jobs are the same. You will find yourself constantly adjusting and whittling!

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Sources of Custom Trim & Woodwork

Koetter Woodworking Inc.

This company creates enormous amounts of custom trim that is sold to traditional lumber yards and some home centers. They make all sorts of trim and they might have a stock profile that will suit your needs.

Paxton-The Wood Source

This is a company that sells very unique woodwork made from unusual wood species. They are limited in their national distribution, but you might be lucky and have one near you or they may ship to you. They are in the following cities: Albuquerque, Austin, Cincinnati, Denver, Des Moines, Grand Prairie, Kansas City, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa. There is no single phone number for all.

Molding profile possibilities are infinite. A woodworking mill can design and create any profile you desire. It is just a simple matter of making the cutting knife that fits into the shaping machine.

In my home town of Cincinnati, we have no fewer than five mills that will readily make any molding knife that you want. They will then mill just about any wood species you want with that knife. So, if you want walnut woodwork, or cherry, or zebrawood, it is yours for the asking.

The high-strength steel knives that shape the molding can be ground by hand or they can be made with highly sophisticated milling machines that are computer controlled. One set of knives can remain sharp enough to cut thousands and thousands of linear feet of trim.

The best place to start looking for custom trim is your local lumberyard. They almost always have contacts for custom trim. If you want other places, use the Search feature on this page and type "Woodwork" or "Woodworking Mills" or a similar type heading. Put on your Columbo trench coat and start acting like a detective. Get comparative prices and remember that the more trim you buy the cheaper the price is per linear foot!

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The real test of carpentry comes when the work shifts indoors. Just about anybody can frame houses and do exterior carpentry. Sure there are expert framers, in fact, if you want to be an excellent rough carpenter you need to work as a finish carpenter for about nine to twelve months! Do this and you will see what headaches can be avoided with a few extra minutes spent getting walls square and plumb. This is especially true when it comes to hanging interior doors.

The Helix

Let's go off on a tangent quickly to prove my point. If you try to hang an interior door in a wall that is not only out of plumb but slightly twisted, the rough opening of the door is actually a helix. You can create a small example of a helix by taking a credit card and hold the four corners in your finger tips. Now slightly twist the card. That is a helix. Well, when it comes to hanging doors, you want the opening to be in the same plane. If it is not, one of two things will happen: If you want the door to fit perfectly against the door stop, then the jamb will be sticking out past the wall in one or more spots and it will be recessed somewhere else! Or, you will get the jamb to be flush everywhere but the door will not be flush with the jamb when it closes. See why rough carpenters need to take extra time to do their jobs right?

Shims

One of the materials you need when doing finish work is shims - and lots of them. They are used to level cabinets or anything else. You need them to hang doors. Shims are frequently used to install baseboard and door and window trim. Good finish carpenters always travel with two or three bundles of shims. I like to use cedar shims. They are easy to cut with a sharp razor knife and are a pleasure to work with.

Trim Profile Problems

If you are casing a door or window or even installing crown molding, don't assume that each piece of trim will have the identical profile across the face of the trim. You may get trim from different mill runs. It can get all mixed together at the lumber yard. You generally see problems when you cut the casing molding flat and try to join two 45 degree angles over a window or a door. If you have this problem you can solve it with a little sandpaper and a small sharp wood chisel.

Temperature & Humidity

Wood is a hygroscopic material. It responds to changes in humidity. This means it can expand or contract. If you are doing a large trim job, make sure the inside of the house is at or near the temperature it will be at when people live in it while you are installing the trim. What's more, make sure the trim is stored indoors for 3 or 4 days to get comfortable and acclimated with the temperature and humidity. If you take trim from a cold, damp garage and install it, it may look horrible in a week when joints start to open up. It is a common sense issue.

Finger Joints

In an effort to conserve our natural resources, some lumber mills are making wood trim from small pieces. A special machine cuts finger joints that allow small pieces to be glued together into long pieces. Finger jointed wood works fine for painted work but be careful if using it for stained work. You will see the grain changes and the finger joints through the urethane. Some finger jointed material is available with a super thin veneer over it that masks the joints. If you buy this, keep in mind that you can only sand it very lightly. Aggressive sanding may expose the core. Don't worry, you can readily get long lengths of solid trim if you desire it! It is out there!

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Tim's Finish Carpentry Tools

If I am working on an interior finish carpentry project, there is a group of tools that I must have. Without these tools, professional results would be nearly impossible.

Here is a list of the absolute must-haves:

• 12" diameter power miter box saw - it can be a compound one, but it isn't necessary
• Hand held coping saw
• A simple wood rasp
• Razor knife
• Assorted wood chisels
• Paslode Impulse Finish Nailer

Those are the must have tools. This assortment will allow you to complete a wide variety of common finish carpentry tasks around your home. Of course if money is no object, then make sure you have the following extra tools around. They will come in handy. I use each one of the following from time to time:

• Assorted squeeze clamps
• A block plane
• Belt Sander
• 6 Foot long metal straightedge
• Screw gun
• 1/2 hp Router with assorted bits
• Cordless Power Saw with Micro-cut Blade
• Table Saw
• Biscuit Jointer-Biscuits-Glue

I'm sure some of you can think of more tools, but these will allow you to do so many things that I can't imagine you having that much time to complete that many projects - especially in your free time.

In order of importance of buying these extra tools, I would absolutely get the table saw, router, and belt sander first. The screw gun, cordless power saw, and the biscuit jointer should be purchased only if there is extra money. The other tools are not as expensive and can be purchased here and there.

Remember to buy the best. The tools make the job. An inferior tool can produce less than perfect results and slow you down.

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10 Finish Carpentry Tips

Calibrate Your Tape

I'll bet you have dropped your tape measure a time or two. Look at the tip of the blade. See if the little prongs that grab onto the end of a piece of wood are bent. If they are, your tape is going to read wrong when you translate an inside measurement to a length! Take two pliers and carefully straighten the tape prongs.

Pencil Marks

A simple pencil mark can be confusing. Sometimes the line is slightly curved. Where do you cut? Finish marks should be crisp arrow points. The tip of the arrow is the exact mark. Just remember what side of the line to cut on!

Support Your Work

If you are using a miter box saw and cutting long lengths, they will flop around and cause you fits. You may need three of my carpenter's benches, one for the saw and the other two as outriggers to catch the ends of the lumber being cut.

Cut Upside Down

Are you making cross cuts across grain? Trimming down a door or cutting finish plywood? If so, you can reduce splintering if the circular saw blade cuts up through the finish grain. This means cut plywood with the good side facing down. If both sides are good, then make a fine pencil line and use a straightedge and razor knife to score the wood first.

Straight Cross Cuts

Clamp a thin metal straightedge to a piece of plywood or other material to get long straight cuts. The bottom platen of the saw butts up against the straightedge and uses it as a fence. All you need to do is calculate the blade offset so the cut is the right length. Do this on a test piece of lumber.

Avoiding Miters

If you are working with tall baseboard, it can be a nightmare to create miter joints. You can eliminate miters by using decorative corner blocks at inside and outside corners. This is a fancy trick for crown molding as well!

Crown Molding Tips

Crown molding fits into a saw differently. Place it upside down in the saw. It sits in the saw at the angle that it rests at on the wall. Cut 16 inch long test pieces that slide into each corner that tell you how out of square each corner actually is. Nail triangular scrap lumber into the wall/ceiling corners. Nail into the wall top plate. These blocks allow you to use shorter nails in the crown and you can nail anywhere you like instead of hunting for ceiling joists.

Glue and Stain

If you are staining woodwork, watch out for excess glue. If you wipe glue off with a wet rag, the glue can get into the wood pores and block stain penetration. Be careful with the glue!

Splits

If using conventional nails, watch out at the ends of pieces of wood. Regular nails are pointed and they can easily cause splits. Either dull the nail tip or pre-drill a small hole to avoid splitting.

Practice First

If you are trying something new, always practice the cut or technique first on some scrap wood. If you are doing miters for the first time start inside a closet, not at the main door of the house. Make mistakes where people will not see them.

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