TRIM Base or Skirting. The walls and ceilings of rooms in which there is no attempt made to give an ornamental treatment in wood work are ordinarily finished in plaster. Even in the cheapest work, however, there should be some sort of finish at the point where the floor and the wall meet, in order to stop the plaster and the finished flooring. This member is called the "base" or "skirting" and is almost invariably of wood. It may be of hard wood, or of soft wood for painting, and may be very plain or very orna mental. Such a base would ordinarily be made out of stuffs inch or inches thick, and would be made from S to l 0 inches high above the floor. The top of this member is usually molded in some way. Fig. 355 shows such a base, made very plain. It is about S inches high, slightly molded at the top, as shown at A in the figure. The finished flooring C passes under the base, in which case the flooring must be laid first, but the base may be set in place before the flooring is laid, and the flooring stop against it, in which case it is necessary to place a quarter round molding, as shown at B in the figure, to cover the joint between the two. E is the plastering against which the base sets and DD arc grounds of wood which are nailed to the studding or furring before the lathing and plastering are done, so as to provide something to which the base may be nailed. The base should not, however, be fastened at both top and bottom, as it is likely to crack if it does not have a chance to swell and move freely in one direction. The plastering may be carried down behind the place where the base is to go or not, as desired. If the plastering is carried down to the floor, a warmer building is obtained than would be the case if the plaster ing were to be stopped at the top of the base.
Fig. 356 shows how the base may be built up out of two pieces so as to save material, the upper part being taken out of thicker stuff than the lower part. If this base were made in one piece it would be necessary to take the entire member out of the thick stuff and waste material in the lower portion. In this manner it is pos
sible to build up the base in any shape desired, and to make it of as many pieces as seems advisable. A base may be made to any height up to 12 or 14 inches, but these heights are excessive for a base. If it is necessary to protect the wall up to a greater height than can be covered by means of a base, or if an ornamental effect is desired, a wainscot is used.
Wainscoting. Whenever it is not desirable to carry the plas tering down to the floor, for any reason, it is customary to make use of a wainscot, which is a covering of woodwork about 3 or 4 feet high, which either goes on top of the plaster or takes the place of the plaster on the inside of the room. Such a covering may be made higher, up to 6 or 7 feet, and it is then known as a "dado," but the two names are very loosely used and are often confused, one with the other.
The most simple kind of wainscot is composed of matched sheathing, which may be orna mented by being beaded, or v jointed, or center beaded. Fig. 357 shows a section through a few pieces of V-shaped sheathing to illustrate the meaning of the term "V-joint." The sheathing is tongued and grooved and the narrow strips are set up vertically and matched together, but each strip has the sharp edges cut away on one side, so as to form in the finished work a V-shaped depression as shown at A in the figure.
Fig. 358 shows a section taken horizontally through a portion of some beaded sheathing. This sheathing is tongued and grooved in the sam eway as is the other sheathing described above, but instead of being V-jointed as the other is, it has a bead worked on each piece on one edge only, as shown at A. This makes it more expensive than the V-jointed sheathing and much more expensive than plain tongued and grooved sheathing.
Fig. 359 shows a section through some center beaded sheathing, where, in addition to the bead A worked on the edge of each piece, a bead or sometimes two beads are worked in the center, as shown at B.