Now comes the hard part of the wainscoting project.. how to match the pattern of the top rail in the other parts of the house. 

It’s actually a bit hard to tell when parts of the house were built or rebuilt. Anytime we do work, there are layers of history.. We noticed that there are at least 2 types of wainscoting in the living room.. one is obviously much more recent.. perhaps from the 1970’s when the building was converted to a house..   We wanted to match the older stuff.. it might be as old as 150 years.. but probably more like 100 years.

Anyway.. the trick was to understand what the contours of the top rail of the older stuff.. and how we can compose something similar out of modern components. 

Thank goodness for the contour gauge.. here’s what we’re trying to match.

 

And here are the types of parts we can use to reproduce it.. It seems that one company, Brosco, seems to have cornered the market on moulding (or is it molding ?!).. 

 

How will it turn out ?!

stay tuned !

nite all, nite sam,

-me