Learn Spanish (Latin America): Por eso terminaron dejando el zócalo rayado. - That's why they ended up leaving the baseboard scratched.

This structure expresses the final state of an object after an action. Here, dejar is used with the past participle rayado (scratched) to show the condition the baseboard was left in. When used in this resultative way, the past participle functions like an adjective describing the object.

If they had scratched the walls (las paredes) instead of the baseboard, how would the sentence change?

Because the past participle (rayado) is acting as an adjective describing the state of the object, it has to match that object in both gender and number. Since las paredes is feminine and plural, the sentence would become: Por eso terminaron dejando las paredes rayadas.

Why is terminaron dejando used instead of just dejaron?

Terminar followed by a gerund (words ending in -ando or -iendo, like dejando) is a common formula that means to end up doing something. While dejaron simply means they left it, terminaron dejando emphasizes that this scratched baseboard was the final, and likely unintended, outcome of whatever they were doing.

Does zócalo always mean baseboard?