What's the correct name

[Denray]

For this cloth interior wood wall covering found in them 100 yr old houses?

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[Chad Fabry]

Canvas. Are the ceilings stretched canvas?

[Denray]

Stretched like this?

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[Chad Fabry]

That's fairly ugly.

Usually the canvas is stretched to a drum-like tautness and the attaching mechanisms are concealed by crown moldings.

[kurt]

That looks like one of those canvas jobs from the 80's, when various companies were trying to bring canvas back as a way to "hide" cracks in the plaster.

[ericwlewis]

That's fairly ugly.

that made me chuckle.

[Bill Kibbel]

It's called canvassing. It was a fairly common practice to inexpensively hide previous patching, deteriorating/flaking skim coat damage or damage from wallpaper removal. It was then usually painted or wallpapered over.

[Denray]

Thanks for the quick replies all![]

[John Kogel]

The stuff in the first pic looks fairly coarse, made me think 'burlap'. Canvas is more refined, no doubt.

I had a burlap wall in the 70's. The burlap hid the paper-backed insulation. [:-thumbd]

Another word for burlap is 'potato sack'. Old guys remember when spuds came in sacks, and we'd save the sacks for all kinds of things, like the good old sack race.

Another word for burlap is 'gunny sack'. Have no idea what a gunny is.

Well I looked it up and gunny is the material, woven hemp or jute, comes from the Sanskrit word 'gon1'. FYI, if anybody is even slightly curious.

Painted canvas makes a tight wall. Look at what it does on a canoe, for example.

[Rob Amaral]

Saw it once out here in New England...tight as a drum..

[Jim Katen]

In the rural parts of the Northwest - and probably in Denny's area - the interior walls and ceilings were covered with wood shiplap sheathing, a light muslin was stapled over that, and wallpaper was applied over the muslin. In areas where it wouldn't show - the insides of closets and some storage attics - they used newspaper instead of wallpaper. No one ever seemed to use plaster on the walls of houses out in the country around here.

[Tom Raymond]

The original finish on the kitchen walls in my house was painted canvas from the top of the 4' wainscot to the 9' ceiling. I found bits of it, and the bedmold that hid the tacks at the top, under the lath and plaster. There were three horizontal planks under the canvas 30" wide, cut in a single pass on a circular blade.

[John Kogel]

The original finish on the kitchen walls in my house was painted canvas from the top of the 4' wainscot to the 9' ceiling. I found bits of it, and the bedmold that hid the tacks at the top, under the lath and plaster. There were three horizontal planks under the canvas 30" wide, cut in a single pass on a circular blade.

Yes a 30" plank is a wonderful thing to see. Trees were big, and so were the saws that sawed them. The last sawmill for old growth logs shut down here not too long ago. For the really big stuff they had a band saw that would quarter them right in the lake. Then the quarter sawn sections went up to the big circular saw.

Muslin, that could be the material in the closet pic. Thanks, Jim.