Deep dive into American moldings 1740-1950

hey guys bro Bild show special kind of video today I'm showing you a talk that I gave to Colin Technical College up in North Dallas to a group of carpentry and interior design students talking about my book historic moldings kind of period moldings and period details but I start talking about proper details and moldings and and what moldings are supposed to do the Lost Art of building so check it out I think you guys will find it interesting it's a little bit long but there's great content in there so let me know what you think [Music] I am from Dallas uh went to Baylor met my wife there um went to a uh school in Boston called the North Bennett Street School uh oldest trade school in the country uh they have they're kind of a old world trade school uh they have violin making traditional furniture making they have book binding Harvard and Yale went to North Bennett Street and said start a book binding program because we're having to send all our books back to Europe so uh it's a neat place they have a program called preservation carpentry which is what I studied which was Museum quality historic preservation um and learned how things were made 250 years ago um it grounded me in this kind of perspective on building that I came back to Texas and started my company in Fort worth um doing historic preservation and also remodeling houses and redoing things and so um I have this perspective on the way things used to be built and the way things are built today and I'm like ah um I don't think we build beautifully anymore and I don't think we do things I think we lost the art of building um you can go on my YouTube anybody on YouTube everyone watch my YouTube videos so uh I say that a lot right you you You' you've heard that if you've watched in my YouTube so I'm also writing a book right now called uh historic milw work from 1740 to 1950 um and so I'm going to take you through the molding chapter uh right to today and it'll be very relevant um to the moldings that I suspect if you guys are getting out there I'll just tell you that no one knows how to do moldings today okay no one except me no um very few people 1% of people know how to put moldings together Builders don't Architects aren't trained in it um I don't know what your training is whether your teacher is teaching you these things or not but I'm going to show you some of the the ideas behind moldings and mill work um that uh we're no longer practicing so I tell you that because you have a great opportunity and Craftsman as well to teach and train and help help people build better um so hopefully you'll get that out of today's talk today we're going to talk about understanding moldings how they're designed how they're put together what their purpose is we're going to talk a little bit about identifying moldings and it'll help you understand picking and choosing moldings learning more about it okay I show this picture because this was a 1970s house that we worked on I have two companies I have a Building Company Remodeling Company called whole homes and I have a mill work company uh that does architectural mill work so we do both things um I show this picture because I think there is power in moldings okay this was an entry hall to a house 1970s house not very architecturally interesting but all we did was changed the moldings in this room and it dramatically changed how that opening feels right we didn't change the height of it we just changed the moldings okay we changed the width of the moldings we understood that the chair rail height was very important um we understood that there there's this idea called punctuation that defines an opening and so power in moldings if you didn't know that was possible that it is possible and that's the way things used to be designed and put together the problem is today is that in 1760 a builder or someone said to a Craftsman build a mantle and they built the mantle on the left and today we say build a mantle and they build a mantle on the right and I would argue that the mant on the left has proportion and scale and craftsmanship and organization of how the moldings are put together that the other one with store bought brackets and kind of piece together MDF design pieces put together doesn't um we've forgotten how to build uh We've forgotten how to put things together how to design things moldings have a language moldings have they are they are uh they communicate okay these are three door casings a Georgian door casing at the top a federal door casing neoc classical door casing so Georgian 1740 1780 somewhere in that range neoc classical 1790 to 1820 here in America and then a French molding all very different okay all are going to reflect the light differently all are unique and different in fact I think moldings from the different periods are so distinctive that if I took my hand stuck it in the past and pulled out of molding I could tell you what period and when it comes from because they're so distinctive so do not think that moldings are all the same in fact I just did a video on YouTube called never use a molding designed after 1950 um that's because it's all crap after 1950 so this means that you can't go to Home Depot and find good moldings you can't go to most lumber yards and find good moldings okay so it's it's very difficult to get moldings that make sense that are the right size and I'm going to show you that but uh there is a language there is a there is communication that takes place with moldings here's another example okay so this crown molding on the left is a new mcmansion time uh molding and the molding on the right is from a 1740s house uh up in Winter tour if you haven't been a winter tour you need to go if you look at the molding on the left look at the the bottom left corner and if I didn't have that corner to show you what those different profiles were and you were forced to just look up the wall and read those moldings it's very difficult to know what those moldings are doing okay it's very difficult to understand how the light is reflecting whether it's it's concaved whether it's convex and so it just reads as a bunch of lines up on the ceiling versus the cornice that's from the 1740s where you see a clear crown mold at the top a Gap a pause and then a bed mold underneath and we've forgotten how to put that pause in there it's like if you if you're speaking in a run-on sentence and I everything I do and I don't need stop right that's a run-on sentence there's no pause okay moldings need a pause and good moldings and good design have that blank space that that pause there that helps you read moldings so it it's it's a language and we're going to show you more examples of that moldings also have purpose okay they have a job that they do and historically designers when they were looking at moldings and designing moldings they were done they chose shapes and chose things because they they worked and did a job um a supporting molding like the ones on the top left are are lift up okay so if I get up underneath something and I'm and I'm pushing up right that little uh I get a little thing this little motion there coming up is a supporting molding right the other moldings on the right are terminating moldings Tada right finishing at the top that's why Crown moldings often times at the top have this kind of shape and bed moldings have this kind of shape right and that's what you see in this inab in this cornice here we have a terminating molding at the top but we have supporting moldings here because they're carrying weight right so going to get too crazy on it but it but it is the is purpose to these moldings there is the the way things are put together the other thing that people don't understand is that the classical traditions of architecture everybody have you guys studied the five orders of architecture anybody ber in our history okay so there's there's basically five orders in the Renaissance Tuscan dork ionic Corinthian composite orders okay um those orders as they are put together have traditions in w wood okay so the original Greek temples were made out of wood and they were later turned into stone okay at least that's the working Theory and so this example of the Doric order here shows that this uh system is put together you know there's your column there's your your triglyph right the goute the nails that are supporting the the mutual up here all of those things are based on Wood Construction uh Marin cassado and her book get your house right which is must reading okay shows how this original order and the terms that even come from this and so that that first beam that's supported that supports the column is called an architrave okay uh that architrave means king beam right it's the main supporting beam that's supported by these columns and these the triglyphs is just the end of the beam that's coming through that's supported by the architrave right so all of these moldings that show up here in this order right in this ionic quarter have purpose and have Traditions that go back to that original Uh Wood Construction so sometimes we look at these details and we go they're kind of weird they're kind of where do they come from they actually come from this wood tradition the other thing about the orders is that there's a human scale to them okay what that means is is that there's a reason why we go into Old buildings and and and look at them and go I don't know why I like it in here but I like it it's because they've been designed around human scale so the way it works is in this uh you know let's just this tus and Doric order here there's a proportion okay of the width to the height okay it's in in the this this lower orders here it's uh 1 to 7 okay and the ionic order which is thought to be based on the female body is 1 to8 now I've measured my foot and it's uh 11 in long okay I'm 76 in tall right one more inch I'd be 1 to S right that 1 to S proportion one inch from being perfect kidding the female is based on this this this ideal female body of 1 to eight and if you measure it it's not everybody's body is going to conform to this thing but the ideal proportion as the Greeks were putting together their buildings were based on this this masculine and feminine orders so Vitruvius who is the early author who is writing about Roman and Greek buildings the only author from that period that we still have today talked about the gender of these orders and so that proportion okay they based everything off the human body and so the temples and everything else the the human body was the uh inspiration so so just like my hands my ears my eyes my face size of my head is all proportionate to my body they wanted their temples to be proportionate as well what that means is is that all the parts and pieces work together okay and that's when they put together the orders okay they were doing it so that it was all proportionate okay um and and essentially the orders are or uh proportioning systems how to put together like you're designing a build and you're like I want it to all make sense I want it to be cohesive oh the orders that's that's how they did that these orders then inform all the moldings that go into our houses and so there's the pedestal there's the column okay there's your inure at the top all terms that you guys need to know um the height of the pedestal establishes the height of the chair rail in the room the base is based off this this order and this proportion the architrave the the door and window cases are based upon this proportion and depending on the size of your room 9ft room versus 12T room that order is going to the moldings are going to grow and Shrink based on the size of that room just like a very short person a small person small hands very big person has big hands those things change the other thing it does is it helps establish hierarchy here are three rooms okay all the exact same rooms okay here the orders are are totally shown in here and this would be the entry hall of a very formal house right you'd have a chair rail you'd have a pedestal you'd have this these carved moldings at the top you might even have pilers there you you step down into you know uh a study uh you know off the main hall and it starts to be simplified The Columns are no longer there they're implied uh but those proportions are still there and then up in the bedroom you have the same proportions in place but the there's no pedestal there's no chair rail or wne scat the moldings are applied there's not the full in tablature there's only a cornice right exact same rooms through this hierarchy through this system we were able to communicate so you walk into a house and you go I know where I'm supposed to go because that looks like a closet but that looks like actually the the main area look how it's ornamented look how big it is I'm supposed to go through there so this system is a system that communicates the reason most moldings are terrible today is because they don't follow this these original patterns okay and so if you look at this order here okay what you're seeing on the on the side I don't know if you can see this but this says 1/2 D do you see that okay so what's happened is is in in this system it's all based on a proportion D okay the diameter of the column at the base right remember my 11 in okay so all of those pieces are then sized based on D it's why it says 1/8 D there it says 1/16th D says 1/2 d right so very simply if you had a 12in column and you know you would have 1/2 D would be a 6-in base so that there's your base in the room okay there's your there's where to start as far as sizing moldings there's math there's there's systems that have been put together to help you guys figure out how this is put together help you understand proper proportions proper scale I show this slide because this is a 1926 Carpenters manual okay this is this is the design that Carpenters everybody used to understand okay that they had the Roman and the Greek orders you see these numbers there you see the 8D 9d 10d 7D right that was there were your proportioning system there was your orders there was how to put rooms how to put houses together Based On A system that everybody understood there's another history class we could go through why this changed but um anyway that that's there's a lot there okay I just I just did an overview of you know classical moldings and classical systems that hopefully you know made your mind blow up a little bit realizing how much you don't know okay and how much information is there for us to gain for us to build more beautifully so as we look at moldings 1740 1950 we're going to see a lot of change okay really the biggest change happens because of an era when we were handmaking everything to the era when we're machine making everything and if you realize that the Georgian Federal and Greek Revival eras going up into probably 1850s 1860s is a handmade era okay and that determines way moldings look the way moldings why moldings are painted why they're not stain grade in the Georgian period because you couldn't hand plan Oak very well right but you could hand plan White Pine um and in the machine era why Victorian houses have so much wood and so much going on because they had power Mills that helped them you know do Bird's Eye Maple do you know mahogany do Oak right they were finally able to do this so um in the handmade era hand planes were used to shape every molding right um that means that the Craftsman who was making it was also the designer okay that there wasn't they they looked at design books to get inspiration but they were they were making decisions actually at the level of the individual Craftsman making things it was all Craftsman driven that's why things were pain grade machine era okay moldings become a commodity moldings become available by the foot off the shelves of lumber yards and it changes this is a whole another talk but it changes why design changes so much um and why things are more beautiful in a handmade era where they're based on a human scale versus a machine era where things just can get get big because they're because they could do bigger and fatter moldings um and it changes the way we design and so that handmade error versus the machine made really changes design and really is the first step towards this kind of getting away from how things are beautiful um how were moldings designed historically uh there was pattern Books Okay padio was was a pattern book okay his four books of architecture highly influential y'all know who Andre padio is wow is that a yes or am I put you to sleep hello hello everybody out there padio Andrea padio no one wow okay um plao was a uh um Italian Craftsman he was a stonemason okay he uh in the 1500s he wrote a book in the 1570s called the four books of architecture the reason he called the four books of architecture because vrus had written a book called The 10 books of architecture they were all influenced by vrus and everything else he studied the past he went to Rome and actually measured the buildings and this is during a period where the Roman ruins were were laying everywhere they were in a cow field okay the Campo vieno or whatever is called it was a cow field because basically Rome was this great city right time passes it goes away Paul gets crucified outside of Rome right and the Vatican City gets built up on Paul's tomb right that's why it's called St Paul's right so Rome grows outside of the city so the Forum where all the major stuff that in the Roman period was there F kind of falls into disrepair and they're actually taking the marble off those great buildings and burning it for lme okay so he goes there and he's actually studying these historic buildings and he's actually measuring and figured out a way these columns are way up in the air and he's trying to figure out how what the proportions are and he's studying these Roman buildings because he's like who built this like this is the most incredible you know place we could ever go and ever see and I don't know how they got here but everything's so beautiful and I want to measure it I want to draw it I want to figure it out and so he basically invents a style of building all the English country houses are all padian okay he was super influential in England and therefore in in America um the White House is a platan building okay so just put it perspective Montello plao was his Bible he wrote it all the time he had four copies of padia's book because Thomas Jefferson loved loved H padio and his you know his uh his building is based on a padian styling okay so incredibly influential little backstory um and so he would he would actually measure those historic moldings put them in his book and that was one way guys looked at moldings and said oh the moldings should look like this because this is the way they were in Rome there was books like James Gibbs book on the left uh Mount Ary in Virginia was built based on based on that book so there was these influential pattern books by English authors mostly pilo as well that helped determine and help design things this is a one of my favorite mantles at wi tour this is uh uh the Hampton room it's based on this from batty Langley who is a pattern book author notice that it isn't an exact copy it's an inspiration right they're looking at that and going oh I could do this and I like this piece of it but I'm going to change this this is how design happens so today you look at Pinterest or what whatever you look at house or you know the magazines you're inspired by unfortunately our built environment isn't very inspirational at least it's not to me okay so trying to find inspiration trying to find beautiful things I'm always having to look through the past to try to find those things this is an andreo plate on the right okay this is that cornice at this at this house this cornice right up there it's called a cornice that in taure is based on that plate right there now he is doesn't have the carving that platio is showing there but but they basically looked at the past like this and came up with those moldings and those shapes AP now I don't know how much to say to you guys like like I don't know but I'm going to just keep talking and it's going to be drinking from a fire hose but you're going to love it okay um basically these systems okay if you had a room that you had to design okay you can take the Doric order or the ionic order the Tuscan order and use that to design the room okay so in this case I'm take the there's five parts here see this see this on here five parts 1 2 3 four five you divide a room into five parts a 10-ft room let's just G stay with my example it helps you determine what the size of all these different parts and pieces are so my tablature is 2ot tall okay so in a 10-ft room I've got a twoot tall inure notice that uh that inure is divided into eight parts okay so each part is 3 in okay and this ends up driving your moldings okay so that's why with a part is basically think of it as part one of the moldings and so if you take that in taure you got three parts aritra freezing cornice your architrave is 6 in your freeze is nine and your Cornus is uh is nine okay now why is that important cuz your architrave is your door and window casing okay so architraves in hisor short catalogs were always called arcet trades okay they never called them doorcases till about 1890 1900 there were always architraves and everybody knew a window and door caseing was an architrave um and so if you have a 10-ft room and you're going to do the D order which is a very masculine order your door casing is 6 in tall now or 6 in wide how many door casing is 6 in wide are they're available in the market today it's huge there aren't many or an any okay you almost have to custom make a door case in that wide now the reason I'm telling you that is because it's not 2 Ines okay and you know the doorcase around these things is maybe an inch and 3/4 that's too small okay and so the moldings that you're going to find at Home Depot are 3 in maybe 4 in right and so realize that to properly Define and lay out a room you need to have bigger moldings and part of understanding the past is understanding where these proportions come from the Tuscan order you break it into 19 Parts okay you break your room in 19 parts and I'm not really interested in you guys understanding the math I'm really more interested in you helping you understand that a uh a 2-in door casing is ridiculous okay and uh the size of your base and everything else should be probably bigger than than than what you're using um 10t tall uh 19 Parts your tablature is 1 fo 7 that means each of those parts is 2 and 3/4 means your your your case your crown at the very top is about 2 and 3/4 how many people think you can find a 2 and 3/4 inch uh crown for a room okay there's very few of those because everybody likes to use big 5in crowns and 6inch crowns and 10in crowns don't do it okay if there's anything you can learn from this talk don't use a 5 in Crown ever okay unless you're designing the outside of a house and it's a two-story house that's about when you can get into the proportion of a 5in crown but 5 Ines crown and people want to show off showing off all the crowns that they're able to put up there we've kind of gotten Crown crazy okay and people will have this simple room and then they'll throw up four parts on a crown and it's just silly um the way they're doing that anyway I don't want to lose you you guys I feel like I already lost you what's the purpose of moldings anybody know that like why do we use moldings okay to visually reinforce structural elements right right and then introduce the scale and proportion okay moldings are wonderful there's there's no better tool to use into a room that to introduce scal and proportion and moldings so you need to be able to understand and use them properly so so it makes sense right you should be communicating in the room uh where the important pieces are where you uh how to punctuate an opening I talked about punctuation before there's all these ratios okay about punctuating an opening and if you look at the historic pattern books they talk about that a dooring should be 1 to six to 1 to8 the opening so if you have 36 36 in opening your door casing and a 1 to six proportion should be 6 in right that's a big door casing 1 to eight maybe goes down to 4 and a half okay so but anything smaller than that you can't punctuate the opening so you can't how do you elevate a door opening how do you treat it properly like this is a really important space we want to do it you need big moldings right you need something that's going to punctuate that opening and it's based on a proportion over the oversized o overall size of the opening Lancaster room 1810 okay this is a federal Style room but look what's happening okay there's look at that see that that's a pedestal there's your column there's your inure okay everybody see that so there's your pedestal there's your column there's your inature all the moldings that we've been talking about right there in the wall right they are defining and determining the proportion and scale inside this room right and the organization of how this Arch goes up and it just touches the bottom of that arrate right means that this this room is starting to be unified it's starting to bring the parts and pieces together so that these things make sense this is not a random height of that Arch there right it's laid out perfectly so that this proportion of this opening has this size uh piler right there but it just touches that uh archit tray when it runs around the room there's a lot of thought that goes into that that you may not realize until you sit there and go wow they really organized this space wonderfully look how it's all put together in this room room okay this is a simpler room this is called a frock tour room 1780s in Pennsylvania but look what's happening okay there's my pedestal that height of that wne coat my column is implied okay there's no column on the wall like that other one it's implied in that space and there's my cornice at the top now look what's happening with the with the chair rail cap oh it's unifying this corner cabinet and it ties across the height of those window seals and so all of a sudden you go into that room and there's this wonderful little way scope that goes around the room that is the window seill that is the bottom of that of that uh built-in cabinet and all of a sudden you go oh okay this it's it's unified it's brought together I kind of like this I kind of like how it's organized this is a Chesterton room same thing look look what they did here they've got the pedestal right right there and they painted it black which is a wonderful little pretty little detail that runs around this room and then it ties right into this little bracket that is supporting this mantle Shelf right there right and so then you see the little pedestal here and then your implied column which is a panel in this case so there's there's a panel that's implied that implies in the column then your Corners at the top so all the things I've been talking about have been used and are used in the past to help make something beautiful and you walk into a space and you go I don't know why I like this room but I really like it why is it because even the size of the panels right even this thing isn't too big and fat and wide it's actually tall and thin it lifts your eye right it's really wonderful and beautiful how it works going into a federal period which is a little bit later 1820 1810 right there's a lot less moldings in this place but the proportions are still there right I still have a pedestal and a Wain coat cap okay all I have is a chair rail right um but that pedestal height is is established there's my implied column and there's AI very simple cornice at the top right the other thing that's happened in this Federal period is they uh the inure and the fireplace and over the door thing ex exaggerated and they put this decoration into the freeze subtle things that happen through different periods that allow you to to look at them and date them and everything else so this is a Georgian room the Cil bedroom and winter tour no this there's no mantle shelf but these moldings okay because it's 1760 what was happening is in the Georgian period they were looking at books like padio who had studied Roman ruins okay the exterior those Roman buildings and they and looked at it and so the moldings were huge because they had used the moldings that were used on the outside of the building and they kind of looked at and go wow these Rollings are really big and thick so Georgian moldings are fat they're really bold okay because they were taken off the outside of a buildings okay during the neoclassical era Robert Adam guy you need to know uh English author Scottish author um architect he goes to Pompei everybody know pompe okay Pompei the the the volcano goes covers the town in Ash thousand years later they start opening it up start realizing there's a town underneath here they start realizing that the Roman Interiors were nothing like they had been drawing they saw these Roman interiors and they were colorful and they were dainty and there was there there w big moldings and so neoclassical era okay new classicism starts and moldings change okay so in the Georgian period like the room like this the moldings are big and thick look at the panel the raised panel here that's happening over top of that that is big and thick and sitting Off the Wall uh the Hampton bedroom also big thick molding 1760 these would be Georgian to showed you that frock tur room also big thick bulbous molding moldings that kick out into the room this begins to get into a little bit of a a transitional room okay this is the Chesterton room I showing you the moldings aren't as kicked out the the panels on the wall aren't raised panels they're flat panels and things begin to change so like this this the Sheran room I was showing you um very simple moldings okay this decoration that's happening in the freeze app happening up there the urns and the swags and the different things that you see there are all part of that decoration that they saw on the walls of Pompei and they said oh look that's how they did it and so you see these motifs that come from Pompei that begin to influence this style this is the uh another uh Federal room but look how ornate okay that's the Keystone right here okay right over this Arch look how ornate that is now you don't see that ornamentation when you look out the room but look how much detail is in there okay that is all detail that has been done because the federal period is a lighter daintier not as heavy and there's a lot of decoration and Detail in these moldings more Federal moldings more Federal detail very light dainty things there's the uh little swags you see up here uh happening above that typical decoration okay and look what the difference is between the Georgian and the federal okay here I've got big thick moldings that stick out very thin moldings okay look how big my corn my broken pediment is look how simple these moldings are right so you know there's a perfect example of a Georgia molding big fat thick sticking off the wall about 3 in okay these Federal moldings maybe inch and a half Georgian molding there typical cross- seted Corner uh big thick moldings very simple moldings in the federal period this is the pattern book William Payne look at his detailing that he's showing said 1786 uh there's his decoration there's where it shows up in this Federal period so Georgian Federal oftentimes get confused when we build colonial revival houses you can use both but you need to realize the subtlety of where they come from look what's happening with this panel Federal panel flat panel there's a smaller little applied molding look what's happening in the George imp Peri you get rais panel moldings big things that stick off the wall these would be Federal moldings because of all this light dainty decoration here when you get into the Greek Revival period right there new inspiration and essentially the the war of Greek Independence happens about 1820 they break away from the ottoman Turks Americans and British are looking at the Greek culture realizing that it influenced so much of the Roman culture and they realize that the Greek culture was actually one of the first democracies and so they are looking at the Greek buildings and the Greek temples and going that's what we want our buildings to look like and so Greek Revival architecture becomes very uh popular in America but you'll see this decoration and these and the moldings and everything in this period become very stonik okay they become uh the decoration kind of thick and like it like it had been made with stone AAR Le fever book The two- panel door was very popular but this kind of decoration was the decoration that they all they saw on the uh on the uh the Acropolis in Athens and the kind of decoration that were put around doors and they said we want that kind of decoration our houses so you end up with these columns right that are either side of a door or window full in tablature at the top the big strong Tabler this kind of decoration all part of that Greek Revival era um this kind of rosette that's very popular in the Victorian era becomes very popular in the federal period um was popular during the federal period and the victorians are the ones that are actually copying that um but look how big some of these moldings end up being in the in this Georgian period This is a door casing in a house in South Carolina that door casing is probably 10 in wide okay it's huge it's like this big maybe a foot wide um that kind of decoration at the top um and this is kind of the largest period of moldings inside a house that you're going to see these are very big moldings when you get into the uh po industrial era things begin to change so much because factories have a big influence on um design and style uh early early pattern books uh 1873 steam Planing Mill uh would show moldings like this this is an 1880s catalog these are huge okay so look what it says at the top designs for architraves right remember I said that before I wasn't lying there it is designs for aritra bases so these are all base moldings in the house these are door casings okay this door casing sits 6 in by 9 in okay it's a monster okay uh kind of typical in that Victorian period uh 1890s there became a standard uh molding catalog uh that was put into it became standardized in this industry molding catalogs became very popular they would show inside these catalogs typical details of the way a room should look so you see these Victorian rooms laid out with the header blocks and the rosettes and all the different moldings uh examples of how they think mold they think a room should look panel molds all this kind of crazy decoration the reason they're doing this decoration in the Victorian period is because they can they finally have machines that can do the carving for them they finally have machines that can make the the hardwood moldings that they were never able to make before and so there's an exuberance and excitement it's the reason why Victorian moldings look like this right that they there's not a surface that they're not decorating that they're not putting some decoration on partly because they can and machines have made it easier to do that there's a rejection of that in the Victor in the Arts and Crafts period rejection of all that ornamentation that's why that arts and crafts period is a simpler period um you still see great design and dedication uh uh and moldings but look how look how almost a machine like that is and and simple almost no ornamented face uh that would be a very good modern molding that would look very machine like even today they had cataloges 1927 showing how molding should be put together into a room and by 1936 okay so the Great Depression is in 1929 going into the 30s by 1936 look what happens to moldings okay uh there's look there's door casings um right there okay see that dcing see what size that says 1 and2 by 2 in okay so starting in that after the Great Depression they're trying to economize moldings and this is when moldings all fall apart this is when you know the clamshell molding is the most modern unadorned non-classical molding that you can get and it's the reason why it's so popular in those mid-century modern houses because it is a modern molding but the problem is it's cheap and you see these you know the moldings that come out this is a 1956 catalog with the three-step base and the three-step casing a very very popular moldings in the 40s and 50s um is shown right there and how small these moldings are getting so there's a very quick overview of molding 1740 to 1950 what should you do with all this information this fire hose you've been drinking from okay so number one is is and if there's one thing I want you to learn from this is never put your chair rail at 36 in write that down I'm serious write that down never put your chair rail at 36 in okay why okay because the the proportions that are laid out in that classical system okay have the pedestal down here okay uh 28 to 32 Ines is what your chair rail should be you have to get to a room of 15t tall to have a chair rail that proportionally should be at 36 in so if you're doing large Cathedrals and you have a 20ft ceiling you can but your chair rail higher but for most houses 8 9 10 12T rooms no Cher rails over 32 in window seill Heights should line up molding should unify rooms should help pull things together and so we looked at those rooms where it's tied into the corner piece that tied into the window sill moldings unify space visually UniFi it so start finding ways to tie moldings together start start finding ways to find the base and the casing and the crown all to make sense I think the most important molding you can put in the room if the client has no money is a chair rail I'd put a chair rail into a room long before I put a crown in the room because that chair rail and that height like this is too this I know it's probably done for Acoustics but this is too high right this should be down farther and establishing that height is going to bring more vision height to the room okay it's going to drop that down and that panel or that that implied column is going to lift your eye visually I would not make any door casings or window casings less than 4 in wide okay so do not go get 2 and a/4 inch casings 3in casings everything should be at least 4 in and for base moldings I know a lot of Builders out there that will say I want a 12 in or 14in base don't do it okay one fortunately according to the classical system there isn't a precedent for that two go it's much more important to create the strength in the base to make a thicker base than it is to make a taller base and so again um proportions really matter just some examples I showed talked to you about that room I'm almost done if I'm putting you to sleep the uh uh this is that room where tied everything together look what's happened in this room okay they've done a very they've done a stain grade Maybe even Cherry uh wne scat here but look it's at the height of the the um handle so we know it's a 36 in I don't know if you can see it in there but they've painted stripes on the walls there why do you think they painted thin stripes on the walls they wanted to lift the eye visually right they wanted to lift the eye but the reason that it looks too clunky is because this is only an 8ft space and this takes up almost half the wall so if they had dropped this down right come down in here they wouldn't have needed paint stripes on the walls because it would have lifted your eye visually naturally this is the kind of thing that you see builders do right where they they want to throw a lot of moldings at the room okay they want to make it look impressive and I could take their molding budget probably cut it in half and make that room look 10 times better because I understand the proper scale and proportion of moldings which moldings go where you know how height this wne coat should be why it shouldn't line up with this look at this wine cut is actually above the doorway about 48 in right the the size of that column all of those different things are wrong okay and they you look at it and go o kind of busy right if you understand how to put the moldings together you can make a space like that beautiful all because you're just looking at the past putting that together why is this door door header not work okay again I could take a third of the budget on this this one I would lower the chair rail right that's already above the doorway I would lower it down to about here right and then I what is this right it's it's casing casing casing casing right there's no pause there there's no there's no stopping right it's just a loud group of moldings that you don't need a crown that big in in a room that's only 8T maybe 8 and 1/2 ft tall and so there's a uh restraint that if you understand how these moldings get put together you can help make your rooms more beautiful help make these spaces More Beautiful by not getting crazy then just I talked you you kind of figured it out I saw a few people when I got into the 1930s but look at the door changes in door casing right then that Georgian Federal area you see that 6 in 5 in victorians sometimes they're in the six seven 8 in arts and crafts you begin to see molding shrink a little bit by that period Revival era 4 in is about as big as you get and then you get after that period And even up in the day and then they're very small um and so there is that punctuation I was talking about that 1: six 1:8 ratio um means that if you wanted to find an opening if you want to punctuate it properly you do need bigger moldings to do that here is a example of a a Georgian molding at winter tour um 3 in Off the Wall 6 in wide right here's a federal mold holding see it's getting daintier these little beads make it uh help it reflect light differently and there's your 50s clamshell that's how much things have changed um okay what do you think

Channel: Brent Hull

Views: 4,208

Keywords: house tour, historic house tour, historic home renovation, historic homes, historic house restoration, historic home restoration, historic homes in america, home renovation, home tour, renovating old house, renovating ancestral home, home restoration ideas, historic homes tour, home improvement, how to fix, renovation ideas, period revival homes, classical design, Classical porches, great porches, best historic porches, good moldings, classical molding, interior design

Id: -_6O9B74ygg

Length: 46min 50sec (2810 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2024