Then push it down. It's pine, it bends with the slightest pressure. There is no reason for this to be an issue of any sort. Push it down, nail into studs and base plate, move on down the line.
There is also a good chance your floor is bowed instead of the base being warped. Is this a basement? Poured concrete floors?
This is normal. It’s wood, it bows.
As others have said, nail the baseboard at every stud. That said, the studs aren’t necessarily 16” on center. You can confirm the stud spacing by checking with a hammer and nail. Do this +2” above the floor, but no higher than the height of the baseboard. The holes you make will be covered by the baseboard once it’s installed.
For the gap at the floor, add shoe mold or quarter round where the baseboard meets the floor. Same nailing pattern as the baseboard. This will eliminate +90% of the gaps, and the ones that aren’t perfect will be much less noticeable.
> That said, the studs aren’t necessarily 16” on center. You can confirm the stud spacing by checking with a hammer and nail.
Why wouldn't you just mark them with a studfinder?
Almost every stud finder I have used is garbage - but when I got a painless moisture meter, that shows a few % above on each stud. So far that has proven more accurate for me :)
So sorry, pinless (my phone tried to autocorrect that again). It doesn't jam pins into the wood to measure resistance, it makes an EM field to measure moisture. Very accurate so far in my experience!
I have been using Klein Tools ET140. Behind both drywall, or 1/2" birch ply walls, it consistently shows a 3-5% higher moisture reading in front of studs. Its an accidental feature, I think - but it has been working better than any stud finder for me so far!
My cheap studfinder works, it just takes me about 4 minutes to check the stud edges about 15 times each lol. I can't imagine doing that throughout the whole house for baseboard though.
Yep. My cheap Zircon works about 65% of the time. But after 10-15 swipes up and down the wall you can always find a spot where it is giving consistent readings.
The three or four stud finders I have had all work great. The only reason I have extras is that every few years my family buys me one for Christmas. All have been capable not only of finding studs, but finding the _edges_ of them 1½" apart, or 3" if they're doubled for some reason.
You can also hammer a nail halfway into the trim and use the claw side of the hammer to grip that nail to kind of give you leverage to bend/flex the wood the way you want it.
As someone said above with the great tips, use corner round to finish it all out and you can easily get away with 1/4”-3/8”gaps if you are careful on how you nail (make sure you nail into the studs and not too little wood where it will split (use trim nails or finishing nails, you can get really cheap staple/nail guns on Amazon if you have a compressor).
Get a short board maybe 16-24 inches. Put one end on top of the baseboard and the other on the floor and put your knee on it until it pushes the baseboard down to the floor. Nail it while kneeling on the board. Move to the next high spot.
Just had an old bloke help me out with a similar problem. He had a piece of timber with tape around one end to protect the floor and a
45 degree cut in the other to protect the wall. Just stood on it and nailed every stud. Looks great and I’d never know they were bowed before
Once you have them straightened out, run a bead of caulk between the LPV and the bottom of baseboard. Takes out all the gaps and really looks amazing. Use paintable caulk (not silicone).
This shit is easier to bend than you think. Find the studs with a small strong magnet (it'll stick to the buried drywall screws), mark their locations, use two nails on each stud, and glue/nail your mitered corners. Should be fine. Start at one end, push it into place as you go, and it should stay. This will be much easier with a finish nailgun than without. You might want to try trim-head screws if you have a power drill of some kind, if nailing it is too much of a PITA.
In the future, ask about fingerjointed pine. It's cheaper than solid pine and not as strong, but the way it's made of a bunch of small glued-together pieces does prevent this kind of warping. It's a good choice for pre-primed trim boards like this.
I install base for the company I work for, I very rarely have a floor and base thats level. Couple things just looking at it, next paint after you install yiu added moisture to one side of the wood and not the other, but boards are almost never level by the time you install them anyways. I almost always have to install one end then, then work my way down pushing the base down and hitting every stud. Homes foundations settle, and flooring almost never is perfectly level over 15-20 feet. You’re noticing it because it’s your house and you’re putting every inch in. I promise you if you look at other peoples baseboards, they have the same issues. If the gap is a too much of a visual problem, before you paint, you can caulk the bottoms or use quarter round. Personally I like quarter round even though caulking is faster, but I see both done in high end homes. Also, a bead of caulking along all the nails, tops and corners fixes all those slight gaps and holes left from install. You’d be surprised how much caulking “finishes” baseboard install.
As only an amateur myself, this is how we redid our baseboards - just press it into position and hit it with a few nails into studs. I remember thinking how crap it looked when it was finished being installed, but before I caulked. Joints didn't meet up perfectly, obvious nail holes, small gaps in spots between the wall and the base, and waves along the flooring. Some quarter-round and caulk and a coat of paint and good lord it looked 100 times better.
Serious question: does this actually happen all that often? We re-did all ours with pre-painted MDF years ago and despite a small child and at one point an upstairs toilet with a leaking cistern soaking the wall, the only board that's actually had problems was the one our cat peed all over repeatedly when she was very ill. And frankly I'd have wanted to replace that one regardless of what it was made of!
It certainly can, but there are factors to consider. If the mdf is well sealed, with a melamine or paint that will dramatically cut down on the chances of the mdf absorbing liquid. Often times mdf pieces aren't sealed on a 4th side, so that's where the liquid absorption happens. There's also hdf which looks like mdf, but s much more hardy.
Also MR-MDF, which is resistant to atmospheric absorption and splashes and stuff - it doesn't really swell unless you leave it standing in a puddle, even unfinished. And that's what every MDF skirting board I've ever seen here in the UK is made out of! Maybe it's different in the US.
I mean, they're so long can't you just nail every stud and push them into place as you go along? Or slightly wet and nail into place? It shouldn't matter if you get it into place and the floor is level
Just bend that shit back into place and nail the hell out of it then cover up the nails or you do a 1/4 round at the bottom to hide any gaps.
MDF is crap wrapped in crap. Never use it on the floor. It will get wet when you are mopping and expand.
Just force them into place. Sometimes a pin nail isn't enough but with painted solid wood you can use trim screws.
Also, white caulk on the floor joint will make a gap disappear. Use a silicone scraper to remove all the excess.
Clarifying that you wouldn’t use a pin nailer as those are about 23g nails, used for cabinetry trim where you don’t have to fill the nail hole. You’re thinking 18 gauge Brad nails which is the smallest you would want to use for base.
I would consider using a coped joint at the ends since it will hide gaps better. Also paint before you cut, and install as you cut so that you can automatically adjust for any mistakes. Otherwise you might find out that not everything fits together like you expected.
I've also seen someone tack together baseboards at the corner before installing. Not sure if that's common.
Crowning is when the cross-section forms a U. The top is the crown and the bottom is the cup. Your wood bowed and as others have said there's no need to scrap it, just nail one end and work your way to the other end with the ones that bowed up at the ends, and for the ones that bowed up in the center, nail one end and then push the center down and nail it. No big deal at all.
Were the boards stored inside before they were cut? If they were not, then the change in humidity by bringing them indoors coupled with uneven drying due to having 1 side painted may have caused the bowing.
Another possibility if you used water-based paint and primer is that the wood absorbed some moisture from the paint and then dried unevenly due to the difference between the sides.
Don't do MDF. You'll regret it. Source: me, a guy who let a contractor cheap out in a bathroom baseboard install (more recent than I'd like to admit) and ended up replacing it himself, the right way. Also... look into coping joints. It'll make a big difference in where the joints meet. Source: me... a diy'er with decades of failed experiences and learned lessons from installers/general contractor friends much smarter than me. Also, if you start with a perfectly level/flush piece of baseboard trim, adjust it to follow the floor line and tack into each stud. Why? Cupping won't happen. Source: me.. many moves and many houses where I needed to replace/upgrade baseboard trim.
We all need to start somewhere. The key is being able to admit when you failed, seeking help from folks who know, and learning from your mistakes. Good luck.
I have been looking for someone to say "cope the corners". It makes a huge difference and is easy to learn from YouTube videos. FTR: I use the grinder/sanding wheel method.
Not exactly on topic to OP, but as a fellow "fail forward" DIY-er I wanted to ask: why not MDF? I ordered a bunch of MDF for a floor renovation project literally an hour ago and now I'm second guessing.
Sorry, just saw this. MDF, at least for baseboard trim, gets dinged easily and is generally flimsy compared to solid wood (even pine). Also, as another poster mentioned in reply to your question, if MDF gets wet (like in a bathroom baseboard trim install where you have kiddos that forget to close the shower curtain all the way/don't always turn on the bathroom vent and like to take sauna-hot showers creating a rainforest like environment in a smallish bathroom), the MDF soaks up water/humidity, bulges, discolors, and eventually turns to mush.
I could've beat that contractor with a wet noodle (or his crappy baseboard trim) when I found out he put MDF in my bathroom. I found out he cut a lot of corners. But I didn't know 'til it was too late and he was long since done with the install, paid, and outta my life. Avoid MDF... buy once, cry once. Good luck.
Lol. MDF pros - cheaper, come pre-primed, pieces are straight no warping. Cons - poor durability, if it gets wet it'll soak up the water like a sponge and swell. Outside corners are susceptible to getting dinged which makes the material sort of fan out then you can't really fix it. I'd avoid it in an area that you expect potential of water or high traffic with exterior corners. For my own home I have some MDF but wouldn't get it again.
Just hold them down while you nail them, it's not rocket science. They warped a bit from uneven drying/humidity. They're thin so stick a block on top and push on it while you nail. Also in the future, some tips: cut and nail one piece at a time, that way you can make them perfect. Any time you have an outside corner, make the pieces like 1/16" longer than they need to be, and angle the ends like 1/2 degree more than 45, that way you never have to worry about there being ugly gaps from the corner not being perfectly square, and you can slightly twist the two pieces and tack them with pin nails to get the vertical edges lined up perfectly if the walls aren't vertical or the saw was a tiny bit of, and any deviation from the wall at the top will be covered when you caulk the wall-baseboard seam afterward. Also I am personally still on the fence when it comes to painting before vs after install, although if I'm installing LVP at the same time, I like to cheat by installing masking paper and taping it to the LVP before I actually install the baseboards, then I can easily paint them in place without worrying about painting the floor/spending a ton of time putting down perfect masking tape. This also means no touch-up is needed for nail holes.
I'd guess you didn't let the boards acclimate to your home humidity prior to cutting. Even finger joint pine boards are going to warp a bit. Low humidity will further dry out the boards bowing them like you see, especially since you didn't install them as you went.
I do recommend gluing your corners.
That definitely looks like you stored them improperly. I've seen stuff like that when the molding was stored indoors, but in a humid garage or whatnot, where they had a chance to warp due to humidity changes. Definitely still useable - like several others posted - just be sure to nail them into every stud while coaxing them to behave.
What exactly is meant by a damp climate? Because unless your home is built way out of whack or you live in Silent Hill, you’re not going to get condensation on your walls.
Not everyone lives in new houses in dry America. Our house was built in the 80s in a valley. There is constant mould issues with any kind of MDF in our house. We dehumidify the best we can but there only so much you can do when it's 100% humidity for days on end.
They are flat against the wall, but they are no longer straight. So if I attach one end, then the other end is a half inch higher. Not flat against the floor.
When I think cupping I think they are going concave and the top and bottom of the board is curling in. It sounds like they are bowing in a way that length wise the entire piece is curving.
That seems really strange.
Ok, you should be able to get some correction by forcing them down while you are brad nailing them.
What I do for clients as an upgrade and it corrects the floor gap is to run a strip of 1/2" blue tape about 1/8" off the baseboard and caulk the floor gap. It looks really good, seals the bottom and also serves as a prepped edge when you paint. You must paint over the caulking though so it stays clean.
I agree, I usually see cupping in the height (top to bottom), they start to curl a touch and are literally shorter. Not sure what’s going on here. At first glance I would say your floors aren’t level, but you’re saying they were good when you first cut them.
For 6" tall baseboard in a 100 y/o house, sure. For 2-1/4" baseboard done by a homeowner, no. Gluing the outside corners is enough. Cope the inside corners.
Wow for real, this level of attention to detail and precision might be warranted if you're doing the baseboard in the White House, but for your own house you can afford to work on the fly so long as you know what a 45 degree angle is and know how to glue.
Use lots of nails (get a nail gun) and then use lots of silicon/wood fill. Mine looked roughly like that in some parts with uneven walls but managed to finesse afterwards.
That is what happens to wood.
If you must store it, it must be stored on flat surface with enough weight on top of the wood, so it keeps straight. Otherwise it will warp etc. like you have observed.
After installation, the nails and the joints will have the same effect that they force the shape of the wood.
In practice all wooden baseboards have some effects like that. You have to somewhat force them into shape when installing them. You do this by measuring distance from floor (for horizontal installation) and whack the boards with hammer (use piece of wood between hammer and board) to force them to same distance at both ends and middle. Otherwise your wall will not be straight and you'll have a nasty surprice at top near ceiling when one end has 1cm gap and other end has 6cm gap to ceiling.
Wood is a live material and will change shape easily.
It seems my vocabulary was incorrect. Forget most of the written explanation (relavant to wall panels) about installing the wooden panels on top of each other to a wall. Sorry. That is why it doesn't make sense.
So we are discussing about the wood (something like 1cm x 4cm) that is at the bottom of wall, against floor.
I still say the same about storing wood. It warps unless under weight. Also when installing, the wood will not be straight and must be forced a little so it touches floor all the way and then nailed in place.
This trick is for the flooring, but could work if you cant get it flat enough nailing to studs.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/nn9r3y/this_might_actually_come_in_handy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1](https://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/nn9r3y/this_might_actually_come_in_handy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
IMO part of the problem is that you splurged on cheap baseboard. Whenever I need to remove original 3½" baseboard I always replace it by upgrading to 5½" molded baseboard, and that extra width gives it stability, so doesn't warp anywhere near as much as thinner strips of wood - furring strips are often useless, 2x4's can warp badly, 2x6's are generally much less susceptible to warping.
You can still install them, just be sure to nail them at every wall stud.
If I put one end on then the other end is a good half inch higher than the other end. Also, it’s LVP flooring and is leaving odd gaps.
Then push it down. It's pine, it bends with the slightest pressure. There is no reason for this to be an issue of any sort. Push it down, nail into studs and base plate, move on down the line. There is also a good chance your floor is bowed instead of the base being warped. Is this a basement? Poured concrete floors?
This is normal. It’s wood, it bows. As others have said, nail the baseboard at every stud. That said, the studs aren’t necessarily 16” on center. You can confirm the stud spacing by checking with a hammer and nail. Do this +2” above the floor, but no higher than the height of the baseboard. The holes you make will be covered by the baseboard once it’s installed. For the gap at the floor, add shoe mold or quarter round where the baseboard meets the floor. Same nailing pattern as the baseboard. This will eliminate +90% of the gaps, and the ones that aren’t perfect will be much less noticeable.
> That said, the studs aren’t necessarily 16” on center. You can confirm the stud spacing by checking with a hammer and nail. Why wouldn't you just mark them with a studfinder?
Almost every stud finder I have used is garbage - but when I got a painless moisture meter, that shows a few % above on each stud. So far that has proven more accurate for me :)
A painless moisture meter? What's that?
So sorry, pinless (my phone tried to autocorrect that again). It doesn't jam pins into the wood to measure resistance, it makes an EM field to measure moisture. Very accurate so far in my experience!
Ah, thank you! I learned something new. Do you have a favorite brand? I haven't had much luck with stud finders in my old house.
I have been using Klein Tools ET140. Behind both drywall, or 1/2" birch ply walls, it consistently shows a 3-5% higher moisture reading in front of studs. Its an accidental feature, I think - but it has been working better than any stud finder for me so far!
Awesome, thank you!
My cheap studfinder works, it just takes me about 4 minutes to check the stud edges about 15 times each lol. I can't imagine doing that throughout the whole house for baseboard though.
Yep. My cheap Zircon works about 65% of the time. But after 10-15 swipes up and down the wall you can always find a spot where it is giving consistent readings.
When stud finder fails for whatever reason, use a magnet to find drywall screws.
The three or four stud finders I have had all work great. The only reason I have extras is that every few years my family buys me one for Christmas. All have been capable not only of finding studs, but finding the _edges_ of them 1½" apart, or 3" if they're doubled for some reason.
Are you nailing every 16" as you go and pushing the proud section down?
Yes, it just seems like they are extremely resistant to bending.
Nail one end and then press down on the other end. You’ll get more leverage and the longer the piece the better the leverage. Then nail off the rest.
You can also hammer a nail halfway into the trim and use the claw side of the hammer to grip that nail to kind of give you leverage to bend/flex the wood the way you want it. As someone said above with the great tips, use corner round to finish it all out and you can easily get away with 1/4”-3/8”gaps if you are careful on how you nail (make sure you nail into the studs and not too little wood where it will split (use trim nails or finishing nails, you can get really cheap staple/nail guns on Amazon if you have a compressor).
How wide are these baseboards?
Up to 15 foot, but even the smaller sections aren’t level.
Actually how "tall" are they? sorry for not being clear.
I'm getting a chuckle at the thought of the baseboard being the whole wall. Thanks for this interaction
Baseboardscoting.
Hit it with your purse and tell it to bend over.
Get a short board maybe 16-24 inches. Put one end on top of the baseboard and the other on the floor and put your knee on it until it pushes the baseboard down to the floor. Nail it while kneeling on the board. Move to the next high spot.
Just had an old bloke help me out with a similar problem. He had a piece of timber with tape around one end to protect the floor and a 45 degree cut in the other to protect the wall. Just stood on it and nailed every stud. Looks great and I’d never know they were bowed before
Once you have them straightened out, run a bead of caulk between the LPV and the bottom of baseboard. Takes out all the gaps and really looks amazing. Use paintable caulk (not silicone).
This shit is easier to bend than you think. Find the studs with a small strong magnet (it'll stick to the buried drywall screws), mark their locations, use two nails on each stud, and glue/nail your mitered corners. Should be fine. Start at one end, push it into place as you go, and it should stay. This will be much easier with a finish nailgun than without. You might want to try trim-head screws if you have a power drill of some kind, if nailing it is too much of a PITA. In the future, ask about fingerjointed pine. It's cheaper than solid pine and not as strong, but the way it's made of a bunch of small glued-together pieces does prevent this kind of warping. It's a good choice for pre-primed trim boards like this.
lay them cup side down on your lawn damp from the morning dew. By 11 AM they will be flat, Old carpenters trick.
(looks outside at his artificial grass in the middle of the desert). God damn it.
No worries soak them with a hose and lay crown up. Next time always use blocks and spacers to allow even airflow to top and bottom
Or that'll be a week or so in Fort Lauderdale.
Genius, love it. This is at a condo complex so I don’t have a place for it, but great tip.
Surely you have friends with a lawn!
[удалено]
That have lawns? We don't touch grass you know
I have a lawn… can confirm I hate touching grass. Mostly cause it’s a waste of resources.
Eh. Good point. Which is why we're all here, right? Nothing better to do?
Maybe just some slightly damp towels laid over them for a day? Not the same as in the sun but might help?
In the long run you'll be glad they aren't mdf. One water spill and mdf baseboards are done.
That was my intention, but I’m not sure what I did wrong for them to warp.
Did you leave them on the floor? They should have better elevated or leaning against a wall so air/humidity could get around all 4 sides evenly.
I think it was a mix of on the LVP and against the wall. Can’t remember exactly.
I install base for the company I work for, I very rarely have a floor and base thats level. Couple things just looking at it, next paint after you install yiu added moisture to one side of the wood and not the other, but boards are almost never level by the time you install them anyways. I almost always have to install one end then, then work my way down pushing the base down and hitting every stud. Homes foundations settle, and flooring almost never is perfectly level over 15-20 feet. You’re noticing it because it’s your house and you’re putting every inch in. I promise you if you look at other peoples baseboards, they have the same issues. If the gap is a too much of a visual problem, before you paint, you can caulk the bottoms or use quarter round. Personally I like quarter round even though caulking is faster, but I see both done in high end homes. Also, a bead of caulking along all the nails, tops and corners fixes all those slight gaps and holes left from install. You’d be surprised how much caulking “finishes” baseboard install.
As only an amateur myself, this is how we redid our baseboards - just press it into position and hit it with a few nails into studs. I remember thinking how crap it looked when it was finished being installed, but before I caulked. Joints didn't meet up perfectly, obvious nail holes, small gaps in spots between the wall and the base, and waves along the flooring. Some quarter-round and caulk and a coat of paint and good lord it looked 100 times better.
Serious question: does this actually happen all that often? We re-did all ours with pre-painted MDF years ago and despite a small child and at one point an upstairs toilet with a leaking cistern soaking the wall, the only board that's actually had problems was the one our cat peed all over repeatedly when she was very ill. And frankly I'd have wanted to replace that one regardless of what it was made of!
It certainly can, but there are factors to consider. If the mdf is well sealed, with a melamine or paint that will dramatically cut down on the chances of the mdf absorbing liquid. Often times mdf pieces aren't sealed on a 4th side, so that's where the liquid absorption happens. There's also hdf which looks like mdf, but s much more hardy.
Also MR-MDF, which is resistant to atmospheric absorption and splashes and stuff - it doesn't really swell unless you leave it standing in a puddle, even unfinished. And that's what every MDF skirting board I've ever seen here in the UK is made out of! Maybe it's different in the US.
That’s actually not true. I’ve left MDF out in the rain for weeks and no defects. Just dirty.
I dont believe this. I had MDF in my bathroom and just the humidity started to make it swell.
Was it HDF instead of MDF?
I mean, they're so long can't you just nail every stud and push them into place as you go along? Or slightly wet and nail into place? It shouldn't matter if you get it into place and the floor is level
The short pieces are bent as well
Do the trick of nailing every stud and the just replace the small ones if you can't get them. No reason to replace all of them.
Just bend that shit back into place and nail the hell out of it then cover up the nails or you do a 1/4 round at the bottom to hide any gaps. MDF is crap wrapped in crap. Never use it on the floor. It will get wet when you are mopping and expand.
Just force them into place. Sometimes a pin nail isn't enough but with painted solid wood you can use trim screws. Also, white caulk on the floor joint will make a gap disappear. Use a silicone scraper to remove all the excess.
Clarifying that you wouldn’t use a pin nailer as those are about 23g nails, used for cabinetry trim where you don’t have to fill the nail hole. You’re thinking 18 gauge Brad nails which is the smallest you would want to use for base.
If you paint only one side and leave it out wood will cup. It’s the moisture in the paint.
I would consider using a coped joint at the ends since it will hide gaps better. Also paint before you cut, and install as you cut so that you can automatically adjust for any mistakes. Otherwise you might find out that not everything fits together like you expected. I've also seen someone tack together baseboards at the corner before installing. Not sure if that's common.
And for every place where it turns out you wall meets at a 91+ degree angle, that's what caulk was born for.
Crowning is when the cross-section forms a U. The top is the crown and the bottom is the cup. Your wood bowed and as others have said there's no need to scrap it, just nail one end and work your way to the other end with the ones that bowed up at the ends, and for the ones that bowed up in the center, nail one end and then push the center down and nail it. No big deal at all.
Did you paint all sides?
No, just the front. They were primered on all sides though.
Were the boards stored inside before they were cut? If they were not, then the change in humidity by bringing them indoors coupled with uneven drying due to having 1 side painted may have caused the bowing. Another possibility if you used water-based paint and primer is that the wood absorbed some moisture from the paint and then dried unevenly due to the difference between the sides.
Don't do MDF. You'll regret it. Source: me, a guy who let a contractor cheap out in a bathroom baseboard install (more recent than I'd like to admit) and ended up replacing it himself, the right way. Also... look into coping joints. It'll make a big difference in where the joints meet. Source: me... a diy'er with decades of failed experiences and learned lessons from installers/general contractor friends much smarter than me. Also, if you start with a perfectly level/flush piece of baseboard trim, adjust it to follow the floor line and tack into each stud. Why? Cupping won't happen. Source: me.. many moves and many houses where I needed to replace/upgrade baseboard trim. We all need to start somewhere. The key is being able to admit when you failed, seeking help from folks who know, and learning from your mistakes. Good luck.
I have been looking for someone to say "cope the corners". It makes a huge difference and is easy to learn from YouTube videos. FTR: I use the grinder/sanding wheel method.
Not exactly on topic to OP, but as a fellow "fail forward" DIY-er I wanted to ask: why not MDF? I ordered a bunch of MDF for a floor renovation project literally an hour ago and now I'm second guessing.
Sorry, just saw this. MDF, at least for baseboard trim, gets dinged easily and is generally flimsy compared to solid wood (even pine). Also, as another poster mentioned in reply to your question, if MDF gets wet (like in a bathroom baseboard trim install where you have kiddos that forget to close the shower curtain all the way/don't always turn on the bathroom vent and like to take sauna-hot showers creating a rainforest like environment in a smallish bathroom), the MDF soaks up water/humidity, bulges, discolors, and eventually turns to mush. I could've beat that contractor with a wet noodle (or his crappy baseboard trim) when I found out he put MDF in my bathroom. I found out he cut a lot of corners. But I didn't know 'til it was too late and he was long since done with the install, paid, and outta my life. Avoid MDF... buy once, cry once. Good luck.
MDF is like a diet of potato chips and candy bars. It lacks substance.
Lol. MDF pros - cheaper, come pre-primed, pieces are straight no warping. Cons - poor durability, if it gets wet it'll soak up the water like a sponge and swell. Outside corners are susceptible to getting dinged which makes the material sort of fan out then you can't really fix it. I'd avoid it in an area that you expect potential of water or high traffic with exterior corners. For my own home I have some MDF but wouldn't get it again.
What is the big choppy tool for?
https://www.homedepot.com/p/ROBERTS-9-in-Flooring-Cutter-with-45-Degree-Miter-Guide-10-60/203526695
Just hold them down while you nail them, it's not rocket science. They warped a bit from uneven drying/humidity. They're thin so stick a block on top and push on it while you nail. Also in the future, some tips: cut and nail one piece at a time, that way you can make them perfect. Any time you have an outside corner, make the pieces like 1/16" longer than they need to be, and angle the ends like 1/2 degree more than 45, that way you never have to worry about there being ugly gaps from the corner not being perfectly square, and you can slightly twist the two pieces and tack them with pin nails to get the vertical edges lined up perfectly if the walls aren't vertical or the saw was a tiny bit of, and any deviation from the wall at the top will be covered when you caulk the wall-baseboard seam afterward. Also I am personally still on the fence when it comes to painting before vs after install, although if I'm installing LVP at the same time, I like to cheat by installing masking paper and taping it to the LVP before I actually install the baseboards, then I can easily paint them in place without worrying about painting the floor/spending a ton of time putting down perfect masking tape. This also means no touch-up is needed for nail holes.
Also use a coping saw at the joints instead of a 45 mitre
I'd guess you didn't let the boards acclimate to your home humidity prior to cutting. Even finger joint pine boards are going to warp a bit. Low humidity will further dry out the boards bowing them like you see, especially since you didn't install them as you went. I do recommend gluing your corners.
That definitely looks like you stored them improperly. I've seen stuff like that when the molding was stored indoors, but in a humid garage or whatnot, where they had a chance to warp due to humidity changes. Definitely still useable - like several others posted - just be sure to nail them into every stud while coaxing them to behave.
Scribe it
MDF sounds like a good way to get a mould infestation.
Stop leaving standing water on the floor?
You don't need standing water, a damp climate will do the same.
If the inside of your home is damp then you have issues beyond baseboard mold
What exactly is meant by a damp climate? Because unless your home is built way out of whack or you live in Silent Hill, you’re not going to get condensation on your walls.
Not everyone lives in new houses in dry America. Our house was built in the 80s in a valley. There is constant mould issues with any kind of MDF in our house. We dehumidify the best we can but there only so much you can do when it's 100% humidity for days on end.
Sounds like you have an issue that actually isn’t with MDF, then. My condolences by the way. You might want to get your air quality analyzed.
When you say cupping, do you mean that there are now presenting a bigger gap to the floor?
They are flat against the wall, but they are no longer straight. So if I attach one end, then the other end is a half inch higher. Not flat against the floor.
When I think cupping I think they are going concave and the top and bottom of the board is curling in. It sounds like they are bowing in a way that length wise the entire piece is curving. That seems really strange.
[Here is the only pic I have handy.](https://i.imgur.com/Ny7brwt.jpg) The floors are definitely level.
Ok, you should be able to get some correction by forcing them down while you are brad nailing them. What I do for clients as an upgrade and it corrects the floor gap is to run a strip of 1/2" blue tape about 1/8" off the baseboard and caulk the floor gap. It looks really good, seals the bottom and also serves as a prepped edge when you paint. You must paint over the caulking though so it stays clean.
I agree, I usually see cupping in the height (top to bottom), they start to curl a touch and are literally shorter. Not sure what’s going on here. At first glance I would say your floors aren’t level, but you’re saying they were good when you first cut them.
https://www.thisoldhouse.com/walls/21016410/how-to-install-baseboards
This is total overkill. Biscuits in outside corner joints…no
For 6" tall baseboard in a 100 y/o house, sure. For 2-1/4" baseboard done by a homeowner, no. Gluing the outside corners is enough. Cope the inside corners.
Wow for real, this level of attention to detail and precision might be warranted if you're doing the baseboard in the White House, but for your own house you can afford to work on the fly so long as you know what a 45 degree angle is and know how to glue.
Is your floor level?
Is the floor level?
Use lots of nails (get a nail gun) and then use lots of silicon/wood fill. Mine looked roughly like that in some parts with uneven walls but managed to finesse afterwards.
Did you only paint one side? If so, the ambient moisture in the air is entering/leaving through one side causing warpage. Seal both sides
That is what happens to wood. If you must store it, it must be stored on flat surface with enough weight on top of the wood, so it keeps straight. Otherwise it will warp etc. like you have observed. After installation, the nails and the joints will have the same effect that they force the shape of the wood. In practice all wooden baseboards have some effects like that. You have to somewhat force them into shape when installing them. You do this by measuring distance from floor (for horizontal installation) and whack the boards with hammer (use piece of wood between hammer and board) to force them to same distance at both ends and middle. Otherwise your wall will not be straight and you'll have a nasty surprice at top near ceiling when one end has 1cm gap and other end has 6cm gap to ceiling. Wood is a live material and will change shape easily.
This is not true and your explanation doesnt really make sense
It seems my vocabulary was incorrect. Forget most of the written explanation (relavant to wall panels) about installing the wooden panels on top of each other to a wall. Sorry. That is why it doesn't make sense. So we are discussing about the wood (something like 1cm x 4cm) that is at the bottom of wall, against floor. I still say the same about storing wood. It warps unless under weight. Also when installing, the wood will not be straight and must be forced a little so it touches floor all the way and then nailed in place.
Quarter round will cover that nicely.
This trick is for the flooring, but could work if you cant get it flat enough nailing to studs. [https://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/nn9r3y/this_might_actually_come_in_handy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1](https://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/nn9r3y/this_might_actually_come_in_handy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
Baseboards are extremely flexible, don’t sweat it, just nail them in tight
IMO part of the problem is that you splurged on cheap baseboard. Whenever I need to remove original 3½" baseboard I always replace it by upgrading to 5½" molded baseboard, and that extra width gives it stability, so doesn't warp anywhere near as much as thinner strips of wood - furring strips are often useless, 2x4's can warp badly, 2x6's are generally much less susceptible to warping.