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Baseboard Installation

Why is baseboard installation so common?

Baseboards are a protective, and sometimes decorative, board fastened over the edge of a floor where it meets the wall. When baseboard installation is attempted by an amateur or do-it-yourselfer there is inevitably an uneven joining, since wall and floor materials usually differ. At the simplest, baseboard can be a plain board, but it may be something much more elaborate. Baseboards are also called base mouldings, mopboards, kickboards, or skirting. They not only cover the joint, but protect the wall from being damaged by accidental kicks, scuffing by furniture, or as the name “mopboard” suggests, by cleaning tools.

Traditionally made of wood, baseboards now come in a wide variety of materials such as molded plastics, flexible vinyl stripping, veneered pressboard, or even metal. MDF, medium density fiberboard, is a popular choice of material. MDF is made of wood fibers which are glued together under pressure and heat. The finished product is flat and stiff, uniformly dense and has no knots. It is easily machined, sawed and drilled. Since there is no recognizable grain it is suitable for painting.

Real wood mouldings are often extended by a process called finger joining. Baseboard finger joining takes short, clear sections of wood and joins them at the factory to produce long sections of mouldings with no defects.

Mouldings come in dozens of designs and widths. Simple profiles include plain rectangular boards or convex clamshell moulding. Elaborate mouldings can be found in many profiles, with or without embossed designs. There are companies (Just Moulding included) that will do custom orders to match historic patterns for restorations. Some extruded vinyl mouldings have a concave shape to serve as both baseboard and shoe moulding (an extra strip– often of quarterround– which is applied in front of the baseboard at floor level).

Outer corners need to be mitered and inner ones coped to create a good fit that will not gap or buckle with changes in temperature and humidity. Just Moulding takes care of all this in the shop before we come out for the install. Also, baseboards and shoe mouldings are usually fastened only to the walls, allowing the flooring to “float” beneath them, for expansion and contraction.