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Do the Shoes Match the Boards?
Do the shoes match the boards? As in, should the shoe on your baseboard match the baseboard or the floor? The baseboard! Here's how to ensure that you have nice, consistent baseboards and shoes that don't fight with your floors.
September 20, 2011
This one will seem silly but it is a question I've been asked a few times and it is something that I always tend to notice. Architects tend to notice little details like this, and I think that getting these details right really completes a space. Plus, we have a reputation for trying to make things difficult and it is precisely because of things like this. Although I would counter that we aren't making things difficult.
We're making them awesome.
That said, what the heck is my point here? You know good ol' baseboards? They're traditionally used to cover up the joint between the wall and the floor; a bit of a band-aid really that has been dressed up over the years. Older homes had taller and fancier ones whereas newer homes had smaller ones for reasons that really escape me. Let's just call it a difference of opinion. Regardless, unless you have a nifty reveal at the bottom of your drywall, you have baseboards. But wait, there's more! See, depending on when the baseboard or the floor go in, there's often a gap between the baseboard and the floor itself. This is most common with wood floors who aren't built flush to the wall to leave them room to expand and contract with temperature changes. If this didn't exist you'd have your floors all mad at you and they'd heave up and it would be pretty bad. So the gap is a good thing. To cover this expansion gap, a "shoe" is used to bridge the difference. A shoe is typically a quarter round piece of wood which visually looks like the "shoe" of the baseboard. For many years this is just the way it was and life was happy.
But then flooring guys really went to town and the proliferation of easy-to-install flooring really sent things nuts. See, when people install floors in a remodel, the baseboard is already there. They rip off the old shoe, pull up the old floors, lay the new floor and then have to install new shoes. But wait! The baseboard is already painted and the owner really doesn't want to deal with re-painting it so the flooring guy grabs a new quarter-round shoe the same wood as the floor and slaps that down. Problem solved!
NO! IT LOOKS AWFUL! STOP!
This just isn't the way it is meant to be. My own house had new floors put in seven years ago just prior to us buying it and these cherry shoes against a wood base drive me nuts. As we've re-painted a few rooms we've gone ahead and painted the shoe to match the base and I can breathe easy in those rooms. But in the meantime, the other rooms just make me uneasy. It is as if somehow ripped your feet off and you floated above the floor. Sounds weird (and actually really horrifying painful, let's just gloss over that), right?
See, here's a room with the shoe painted. Aaaah, nice and simple.
And here's the hallway where the shoe is the color of the floor. Even my dog is mystified! You don't want to get Helo (that's his name) bothered by the non-painted baseboard shoe, he'll get all agitated and lick your face for hours over the issue. (Disclaimer: he'll do that regardless.)
So, moral of the story is: take the extra time and effort to match your shoes to your baseboards. If you have a painted base, have your contractor install primed shoes ready to be painted. If they're wood, well, guess what? You'll have to look for wood to match. But you'll be a happier person, trust me.
