Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Wainscoting: When Half a Wall is Enough

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Wainscoting is a beloved and time-tested decorative way to spruce up your walls. But what is it anyway? Listen in to find out.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What up guys? Hola que tal? It's your girl Chiquis from the Chiquis and Chill and Dear Chiquis Podcasts. And guess what? We're back for another season. Get ready for all new episodes where I'll be dishing out honest advice, discussing important topics like relationships, women's health, and spirituality. I'm sharing my experiences with you guys and I feel that everything that I've gone through has made me a wiser person. And if I can help anyone else through my experiences, I feel like I'm living my godly purpose. Listen to Chikis and Chill and your Chikis on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting for Dave.

So this is short stuff. Let's go. Scoot, scoot, scoot. Sure. All right. Inside joke, everyone. We're talking about what I call Wayne Scotting today. Apparently, you can also pronounce it Wayne's coating.

I've always said Wayne's Scotting, and evidently either one of them are just fine. I saw also people in Schumli and Haysborough pronounce it Wookie cat. Look at a. Okay. If you don't know what we're talking about, we'll tell you right off the bat that Wayne's Scotting is a design feature. 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 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. Waste height. I think the general rule is what? Two-thirds of the way down waist height You will fine and you know depends on your the height of your wall though really Because you would you want to do it different for like a 10 foot ceiling then like a 8 foot so it's quite a setup It is but if from there down you see like you know these any kind of wood paneling or these these wood Stripes paneling or these wood stripes,

paneling board, something like that, not the rail itself, we'll get to that. That is what Wayne Scotting is. Yeah, it turns out it's harder to explain than you'd think, you know? 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 Dotto.

So Wayne Scotting basically covers the Dotto. 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 Wayne Scotting 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. 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 bottom, paint it all one color that's a different color from the wall above it.

You've got faux wainscotting as a DIY weekend project. Can I stop all the carpenters from writing a letter? Oh gosh, did I say something wrong? I think it would probably have to be, I think it would have to be half round. 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 from emails.

Yeah, I mean, that's one way you can do it is literally individual strips of board much more commonly these days. You can buy this stuff in large four by eight 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? 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 caulking? Yeah. Then you can do that.

Some liquid nails, maybe even a little nail shooter. Yeah, a little finishing nail gun. 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 VaganshotShot is where the rich are calling it from now on.

I really like your Wagen-Shot. It's 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 head 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 really something. And imagine that it basically hasn't changed essentially in 700 plus years. Yeah. And the cool thing about Wayne 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 like 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.

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. Oh, really? No, I mean, I always called it chair rail. It can also be called dada 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. Yeah, me too It also technically could protect against Kramer 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. Do we take a break? Yes. All right, we'll be right back Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so there are different kinds of Wayne Scotting. There's bead board, Wayne Scotting. 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 Wayne scotting in front of it Then that is just another kind of smooth version, but I've always just thought of Wayne scouting as being the grooved

Yeah, the bead board. Yeah There's so you said flat panel and you said that it's tough to get Wayne scouting or pull Wayne scouting 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. Oh, great use of fit. Good word. So there's also overlay and raise panel, Wayne Scotting. And that's what you're, 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. So it would be even with the wall above it, right? Yeah. So that raised panel weighing scouting, 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 weighing scotting. It's like a square panel with a square routed into it, maybe like four inches from the top and the bottom of the sides and then there's that leaves another Raised square in the middle of it, right? Yeah, that's raised panel and I just don't it does not

Doesn't doesn't ring a bell with me Yeah, I mean you saw it there, right? Yeah, I just tried to describe it and I do that great of a job But imagine like a square moat in like a raised Panel a raised square of wood 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 the way in. Oh my God.

How about this? Imagine if you had one of those cutting boards that catches the juice, and you screwed it into your wall. 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 lanescotting and then clicking the images and looking at those. Oh boy. 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. In my opinion, kind of the cheap stuff. You get it 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. 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. Man, 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. Yeah. If you've got, if you're doing it in the big sheets, you're gonna wanna 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 bead board 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. 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 Disperidine is the word I'll use I saw what you wanted to do is you make your chair rail even that's all level and then the base That's good. Sorry you shim and then caulk in so that if you really look close at the base board You'd be like oh that that part of the baseboard has a little dip to it and you like get out of my house

Yeah, I tried really hard to cover that up, but that's the that's the savior of DIY Wayne scouting 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. Do you know the old construction term? Measure twice, cut once.

That's a good one. Cock and paint will make it what it ain't. Oh, nice Chuck. If that's not something to end short stuff on, I don't know what it is. I think short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.