A 12 × 14 ft room with one 36 in doorway needs 49 feet of baseboard. In 16 ft sticks that is four: the 14 ft wall with the door splits into two 5 ft 6 in pieces cut from one stick, and the other three walls — 14, 12 and 12 ft — take a stick each. The calculator above makes that cutting plan for any room, so you buy sticks, not feet.
How the calculator works
Enter the room length and width, the doorways and their width, and any bump-outs or columns that add outside corners and length. Choose the stick length, the allowance for coping or mitering each piece and the nail spacing. The result counts sticks, corners, returns, joints and nails, and lists the cutting plan stick by stick.
Doorways
Each doorway is cut out of the longest wall run that is left, centred on it. Measure the doorway across the casing: the baseboard stops against the casing, not at the opening.
The cutting plan
A wall longer than a stick takes whole sticks plus a remainder, joined with a scarf joint. The remainders of all walls, each with its cut allowance, are then fitted into sticks by an optimal cutting plan — the same method used for cutting pipe and lumber — so a short wall is cut from the offcut of a long one. This is why buying by the running foot plus 10 % can be a stick short or a stick over.
| Room, one 36 in door | Baseboard | 16 ft sticks | 8 ft sticks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 × 10 ft | 37 ft | 3 | 5 |
| 12 × 14 ft | 49 ft | 4 | 8 |
| 15 × 20 ft | 67 ft | 5 | 9 |
Corners, returns and nails
A rectangular room has four inside corners, coped or mitered; every bump-out or column adds outside corners. Each side of a doorway needs a return or an end cap. Nail into every stud, usually 16 in apart, and close to every joint.
Common mistakes
- Feet instead of sticks. 49 ft is not "three 16 ft sticks plus a bit" — the walls decide.
- No allowance. Coping and mitering eat a little of every piece.
- Joints at corners. Put scarf joints over a stud, away from corners.
For the flooring itself, use the Flooring Calculator.