Hello, all:

I have a townhouse whose outside would never fit the A&C style but whose inside I'd like to adapt.

I've looked through several books and magazines and, while I've seen walls and ceilings, I've never seen baseboards and would like some help on what baseboards looked like back then.

Were baseboards scaled to the height of the room? The "greatroom" is all one room and there's a loft (master bedroom) above the dining room. The dining room is standard height, exept for the back of it, where I believe there is ductwork hidden in the ceiling.

Would a 6-inch tall baseboard be too high?

We have only one entrance (a set of french doors) with small windows on either side. The windows are set fairly close to the door (with the framing around them they may be about six inches). It appears from what I've seen, the baseboards and framing are the same (six inches, four inches, whatever). Does having different widths/lengths violate the style?

Finally does mitering violate the style? From what I've seen, the baseboard for the wall buts up to the door frame. Is there anything I can put between the baseboard and the door frame to make the join a little less jarring?

Thanks in advance,

Camille Stein

Here are some images of pieces of moldings from the 1920's. In each image, it shows in the lower right of the picture, how the baseboards meet the door frames. Sometimes there is something between them, but often there is not. The baseboards in my 1913 bungalow home are 7.5-8 inches.

Link to more images:
Interior Trim and Moldings

Lauren

In a 1914 Sears brochure that shows a Craftsman remodel of a late 1890s house, they illustrate yellow pine base trim that is 7 1/4 inches high. It was item No. 63M7546. You could get 50 lineal feet for $1.50.

There is usually a base block where the base board meets the door casing. Mitering wasn't done ... at least not in any of my books on the subject.

R.

Our baseboard is 6 inches tall with a simple 30 degree bevel at the top. Here is a picture of it:



Our current home is a later era craftsman (1928) our previous home (1919) had 9 inch tall baseboards with the same bevel. All were varnished oak.

No need to stop at 6 inches, Camille. Although it's not pure A&C, our 1908 foursquare has 7-inch baseboards on the first floor and 9 1/2-inch ones on the second. It appears those on the first floor were once identical to those on the second, but an upper course of moulding was stripped away in one of the many remodels the house endured over the years.

I've pictured a corner of the landing between first and second floors showing where the original upper moulding stops (pardon their condition - they'll get refinished one of these days). The point is that you can start with a baseboard of, say, six inches, and augment it with additional moulding to achieve the look you want - as they apparently did in my house over a century ago.

If you haven't got them already and can swing it, I'd go with hardwood floors and some appropriate area rugs, which can go a long way to establishing an overall A&C look/feel. And don't forget crown moulding if the architecture of your unit permits.