Judge's Paneling, the Dummy Description

Judge's Paneling

One of the ways TV set decorators suggest to viewers that a character is wealthy is to show rich wood paneling in the guy's study or library. That's not a design feature you find in the average suburban tract home, after all. If you wanted to install it yourself, you'd need to know what it's called; and the answer is, sometimes, "judge's paneling." If you asked about DIY judge's paneling, however, you might well run into someone else who didn't know the name; though that didn't stop eHowian Tracie Harris from pretending to explain "How to Install Judges Paneling."¹ Never you mind that missing apostrophe...

We found Harris explaining to her readers that,

"Judges paneling gives a rich look to rooms that have it..."

...while pairing her "explanation" with an image of a door with raised paneling. She then proceeded to "explain" that

"...the paneling can be purchased in manufactured sheets. By carefully laying out a design plan for the sheets, a custom look can be achieved..."

...while never actually mentioning what judge's paneling looks like (see the image above for the clue Tracie didn't have). For that matter, she never bothers to explain how one finds these "manufactured sheets," probably because you can't find "manufactured sheets" of judge's paneling. You can, though, find preformed wainscoting that resembles judge's paneling -- but only by searching for premade wainscoting panels... Oh, Tracie manages to give some rudimentary generalized instructions for installing wood paneling, filled with such confusing if not just plain wrong advice as

"Use nail gun to attach finishing nails through the paneling into the studs after waiting three to five minutes for the adhesive to set."

Ummm, yeah: just nail through the panels to attach them -- never mind leaving nail holes, about which Harris says nothing. But those are instructions for ordinary paneling. They're not even good instructions for the premade wainscoting panels, of which we could only find paint-grade MDF panels. So much for the rich wood paneling featured on television...
No, if you want to install paneling to "[give] a rich look to rooms," you're going to need to install full sheets of hardwood plywood (usually white oak) and cut stiles, rails, and trim molding². In other words, Tracie Harris has no idea whatsoever "how to install judges paneling." That's par for the course for eHow, and par for the course for a Dumbass of the Day.

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_7573851_install-judges-paneling.html
² HINT: google "picture frame paneling" for more information...

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