Beadboard
The finishing work continues this weekend with moving from wallpaper to now finishing the bottom part of the walls with beadboard. I’d previously stained and varnished the planks so they are all ready for installation. I read up on installation techniques and last week we drew level lines around the perimeter of the room. This week I’m solo so I’ll be cutting and placing the planks on my own.
I start with an easy portion of the room where I just need to go from the built-in to a door. It’s a small chunk of the wall with only the shelf of the built-in to deal with. I start by placing a plank against the built-in and then marking parts on the board to cut out a notch. I learn the hard way that I have to be careful trying to cut out a notch from the board. I’m using a jigsaw for the cuts and when trying to make too fine of cuts sometimes the saw rips up the board.
Torn up board from trying to make a notch.
For smaller cuts, I then realize that a hand saw along with a chisel work better rather than trying to use the jigsaw. Once I get a clean notch, the rest of the boards go relatively easily to the door molding. A few of the nails are a little scary because I hit something that doesn’t allow the nail to penetrate when shooting the nail gun. The nail sparks and bounces off so I start wearing safety glasses after that happens. I’m lucky that the boards match up perfectly to the door molding so no cutting needed to fit nicely. I put on a chair rail to finish things off. I’ll do the baseboard later.
Easy part done.
With the easy section of the wall done, next up is a little trickier area with a notch for the built-in and then a window to deal with. The beadboard will approach the window, go under the window and the continue past the window. The book I read on installation talks about using a scribe board to draw a cutting pattern on the installed plank. Basically as you are approaching the window, dry place the last full board (don’t nail it in). You then butt the scribe board up against the window molding and use that to draw on the full board where you want to cut (scribing is using a pencil and a reference point to trace a pattern. Sometimes you use a compass where you use the point to trace against the wood and transfer that to another piece with a pencil. In this case we’re using the board to trace against.) For me being spatially challenged, it’s hard to make sense of this technique Approaching the window I waste a board trying to figure out how to do this technique, but on the 2nd try, I get a pretty decent fit.
Approaching the window molding. The unstained board is the “scribe board” used to help mark the cutting pattern on the last board.
Not super tight around the ledge, but you need a little gap for moisture expansion right?
Under the window goes smaller board and then coming out of the window is the same approach. I learn my lesson from last time and for the pattern cut, I use a scrap board first. I fit the scrap board and then if that looks good, I’ll use that as a pattern to cut a real board. For some reason coming out of the window the dimensions are trickier. The scribe board isn’t very accurate. One problem is figuring out how to hold the pencil when tracing. You get different distances depending on if you angling the pencil or not. I end up cutting the pattern board too small. When cutting the real board I add a 1/4 inch but the window is not plumb so it’s hard to get everything to line up nicely. I then go into a long process of using a plane and rasp to trim the cut board to fit as tightly as possible.
The pattern board. The last full board before the window ends is just dry-fitted. I then dry fit the pattern board after the small board and take the scribed board, place against the window molding and then trace the lines on the pattern board. The pattern is used to cut a real board, and then the small temporary board is replaced with the cut board. The red line is a laser level to check for plumb.
Here’s how I measure out where to cut the notch.
End up with something like this. Notice all of the shavings from planing the board to fit. I place the board in and check for high spots that are hitting the molding and shave them down.
This process takes forever and after an hour or so, I finally get the piece in relatively tightly.
Coming out of the window.
The window takes a lot out of me so I place a few more simple board as I move towards the corner and then wrap up for the weekend. Next weekend I’ll have to turn the corner and deal with plumbing and electric cuts.
The completed window.
