In my house, I have one large room that encompasses the kithen, dining room, and living room. In this space, I have really tall ceilings, and even though I found large items to decorate the walls, they have always felt like they still need a little something. I thought wainscoting was just the thing, but had no idea which kind I liked best, or where to start. Well, thank goodness for Pinterest! I found several blogs with detailed instructions that gave me enough confidence to get going.
Here are the before photos:
We started by prying off the existing trim and using painters tape to tape off the top and edges to paint the bottom half of the wall white. We decided on a height of about 36".
We used the glossiest finish to make it stand out from the top of the wall. The tape on the floor shows where the studs are located so we know were to nail into the wall.
We measured about 24 inches between the vertical boards, but where there were large gaps with windows or doors, or an outlet got in the way, we modified the measurements slightly. We knew we wanted to use 1X4's for the vertical, and 1X6 for the horizontal, so we measured very specifically to those numbers. From there, we went to Home Depot to purchase all of our supplies (listed below).
Now, several of the blogs I read said that the lovely people at Home Depot were nice enough to cut the wood for them. "How great!" I thought. However, they must have more impressive staff at their Home Depot than we do, because not one of the boards were cut to the length we requested. The guy piled them all on top of one another and tried to cut multiple pieces at a time. Have you ever tried to cut a bunch of paper at once? What happens with that? Well, they all end up different lengths! I was steaming as I could tell while he was cutting them that none of them would be right :-( Well, instead of making a fuss over it, we went and put the cut wood back on the shelf (I dared them to question me), and picked out new pieces that we could cut ourselves. We then phoned a friend who kindly let us borrow their miter saw.
Once we got home, we started measuring the wood, and wouldn't you know, the planks that were clearly labled 1X4 and 1X6, were actually 3/4X3 3/4 and the 1X6 were 3/4X5 3/4...!@#$%^&*(*&&^%%?!?!?! Seriously??? Why say they are 1X4 if they are clearly not???? Well, as soon as we started telling our friends who have been around the block with house projects, everyone laughed and said "Ummm, yeah, you didn't know that?". Clearly, no! WTH??? So, back to the measuring we went :-(
I painted (1 coat of primer and 1 coat of paint) all of the wood before we started cutting, as we thought it would be easier than painting once it was on the wall. Luckily we have an unfinished basement to use for these tasks so I didn't have to freeze my hiney off in the garage or outside!
We were then able to cut the wood, and place it on the wall where we wanted it to go. We started by taping it up, and made most of the cuts before we started gluing or nailing.
After everything was permanently in place, we had to fill in the nail holes, and caulk everywhere the wall touched the wood. This was a time consuming step, but worth it in the end! After one final coat covering both the wall and the wood, we had pretty nice DIY Wainscoting that was better than I had imagined! It was hard work, but well worth it in the end! It also took about twice as long (2.5 weekends), and cost twice as much ($400) as I expected, but I'm still happy with the end result!
Supplies:
1 gallon primer
1 gallon high gloss white paint
A few rolls of painters tape
Nails
Painters Caulk
Wood Filler
Miter Saw
Planks of wood based on measurements (remember the wonky measuring!)
Rollers, Brushes, etc. for painting
What do you think?
