The wainscoting was the armor on the lower half of the wall. Oak panels three feet high with a rail on top. The wainscoting protected the plaster from chairs and boots and children and dogs and a hundred years of living. The wainscoting was the wall's bodyguard. Everything above the rail was plaster and paint. Everything below was wood and it took the beating so the wall did not have to.

The wainscoting had joints. Tongue and groove. Every panel fit into the next like fingers locking together. The carpenter who installed wainscoting in a tenement on Orchard Street in 1890 did not sign his name. The wood signed it for him. You ran your hand along the rail and you felt the joints and the joints were tight and that was his signature. A hundred and thirty years later the joints are still tight. Try that with drywall.

The wainscoting collected paint. Every tenant painted the apartment and every coat of paint went over the wainscoting and the paint built up layer by layer like the rings of a tree. You could peel the paint and read the apartment's history. Green was the forties. Blue was the fifties. Yellow was the seventies when everybody went a little crazy. The wainscoting was the apartment's diary written in latex and oil.

You stripped the wainscoting. That was the project. A heat gun and a scraper and eight coats of paint coming off in curls and underneath was oak. Dark red oak that nobody had seen since Teddy Roosevelt was president. The stripping took a weekend and the oak took your breath. The wood was more beautiful than anything the paint had tried to be. The wainscoting waited a hundred years for somebody to see it.

They cover the wainscoting with drywall now. Or they rip it out and throw it in the dumpster and put up beadboard from the hardware store. MDF panels that look like wood if you do not touch them. The original wainscoting was installed by a man who cared about the wall. The beadboard is installed by a man who cares about the sale. The difference is a hundred years and a set of hands that knew what they were doing.

See also: Baseboard, Plaster Wall