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Stop cutting baseboard corners at 45 degrees on old plaster walls
Was doing a hallway in a 1920s row house in Baltimore last month and the walls are out of square by nearly an inch in spots. Cut all my inside corners at 45 and ended up with gaps big enough to stick a pencil in. Had to back-cut and shim everything twice. If you work on older houses, just cope those joints. It takes an extra 5 minutes per corner and saves you an hour of fighting. Anyone else run into this when they switched from new construction to renovations?
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rowank832d ago
The real trick is learning to read the wall before you even make the cut. Old plaster moves in ways new drywall never will, so the corner you measured at 8 AM is not the same corner by noon when the sun hits it. A cheap contour gauge pays for itself on the first job, just trace the profile and transfer it to your miter saw. It feels fussy for a while, but after a few houses you start seeing the logic in how these old frames settled. That hallway will still be there in fifty years, shifting half a millimeter every season, so a rigid 45 is the wrong mindset anyway.
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