Chair Rails for the Dummy Decorator

chair rail molding and corners

We have a handful of pretty dedicated do-it-yourselfers here on the staff of the Antisocial Network. Among them, they've tackled pretty much every interior project in the average home and quite a bit of the outside stuff – no roofing or chimneys, but that's most likely because they all suffer from a touch of acrophobia. All that experience, however, does grant them their own "superpower," by which we mean the ability to spot it when a freelancer is bullshitting about project work; whether it's carpentry, plumbing, electrical or any of a dozen other fields. So yes, that means that today the staff has caught yet another eHowian blathering through her DIYer hat. This time it's a photographer and writer named Emma Lee (yeah, sure, Emily Whoever), pretending to have the chops to inform her readers about "How to Cut the Corners of a Chair Rail"¹ at HomeSteady.com.

You would think that Emma would at least define a chair rail in that introduction that Demand Studio demands, but she doesn't -- she merely prattles on about how pretty "chair railing" can be. No mention of height, purpose, or even materials; though her illustration is of a basket-weave tile, for which her instructions are... useless. No, Emma's instructions are clearly those of a rank amateur:

"To cut an inside corner, place your chair rail molding into the miter box. The front side of the molding will be against the back of the miter box. Locate the 45 degree angle on the miter box and firmly hold the chair rail molding with your hand."

We aren't sure Emma knows what an "inside corner" is. We do know that reputable trim carpenters know better than to simply hold molding in place "with your hand" -- that's what clamps are for, Ms Lee... Next, you say to "Cut the board using a coping saw or a power miter saw. You now have one half of your corner chair rail." No, no, no! Emma, you don't cut miters with a coping saw! You use a coping saw to cope the corner if necessary, but never to cut the angle of the miter! And let's be clear here, Emma: you don't use a power miter saw on a miter box - that would destroy it! With that misinformation out of the way, Emma then says,

"To make the cut of the second board, use the opposite end of the miter box."

Clumsy wording and, well, WTF is "the opposite end of the miter box"? and what if it's a power miter saw? Last, but not least, you mentioned an "inside corner": what about an outside corner?

It's for damned sure that Emma Lee has never installed a chair rail and probably has never met anyone who has. So why's she "instructing" us about how to do it when she so obviously doesn't know, herself? Because she got paid to be eHow, of course -- the largest collection of Dumbass of the Day awards on the planet.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_5020279_cut-corners-chair-rail.html

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DDIY - CARPENTRY