Curved Molding for Dummies

Molding on curved wall

One of the more common problems the DIY freelancers we feature on this blog seem to have faced was abject failure to understand the problem they were supposedly addressing. Few are farther from their putative comfort zone than the liberal arts majors who infested eHow.com, pretending to perform research and answer "how-to" questions for fifteen bucks a pop. Here's one now: returning DotD Cameron Easey and his take on the question some poor schumck asked the internet, "How to Install Molding on Bowed Walls," which you can now find at HomeSteady.com.¹

Easey, here making his eighth appearance on our dumbass podium, is well known for his tenuous relationship with craftsmanship. Clearly, the boy knew so little that he did not even bother to look up "bowed wall," instead merely heading straight for a Family Handyman primer on installing baseboard molding. 

Had Cameron been... responsible, he would have mentioned that a bowed wall can be a sign of serious structural problems. Instead, Cam just assured his readers that,

"Molding, such base molding, can be installed on many types of walls. This includes walls that may be bowed or uneven."

With that out of the way, Easy did little more than copy, reword, and paste the instructions he cribbed from the Family Handyman site. Unfortunately, those instructions weren't for bowed walls...

Cameron should have first asked himself, "What is a bowed wall?" – but he didn't (that would have taken too long). Whoever originated the question probably meant a curved wall, since a bowed wall is something you repair instead of dress up with molding. The answer to the question, "how to install molding on a curved wall" depends on the molding and the degree of curvature:

• If it's flexible molding and the curve is gentle, you can easily bend the molding to follow the curve.
• If the molding is thick and solid wood and/or the curve is sharp, you will need to cut kerfs across the back of the molding to allow it to simulate a smooth bend, then fill the open ends of the kerfs with caulk.

But no, Cameron just recapitulated Family Handyman's instructions for installing molding although, in our humble opinion, our Dumbass of the Day did a pretty lousy job.

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_6394482_install-molding-bowed-walls.html

DDIY - MOLDING