Lesson 5. Creativity Pays: Wainscoting on the Cheap

How to install wainscoting panel trim 

 A wainscotted dining room

So, as I mentioned before, I had this fantasy of putting fancy wainscot paneling in our dining room. I knew I wanted to try to do it myself so I looked online to see what it would entail. I found some really neat prefabricated kits, but they were literally around $30-$40 a foot which seemed completely unreasonable to me. So I went into creative solution mode.


                                  1st idea:

I thought to myself, what looks like the little prefabricated panels they are trying to sell me? Answer - cabinet doors. So I found a place online (Lakeside Moulding) that sells custom size doors up to 36" square for a flat price of $10.50, which would have brought the materials to about $320 including shipping. This seemed like a good deal, but after I got to thinking about it, it would be a lot of work to prime and then paint them and it was going to be pretty expensive to ship them even though they are only produced about 350 miles away. On top of that, they were 3/4" thick which would normally be ok, but I didn't want to have to remove my base board to install these so I really needed something thinner that would match the profile of the top of the baseboard when installed on the wall. Mr. Delta also expressed a preference for a raised square rather than a recessed one. 

Base cap, crown moulding, a strip of Lauan,
and a sample of Coronado chair rail

2nd idea:
After scrapping the cabinet doors idea, I decided to delve a little deeper. What if I started from scratch with a thin piece of paneling wood, some Coronado chair rail (love it! $4.99 at Lowe's) and some wider trim for the top? Once again, Howard the Handyman saves the day in my materials quest. After recommending Lauan (a thin, smooth wood underlayment that comes in 4'x8' pieces) as the wood paneling choice, Howard was kind enough to go fetch my wares from out local Lowe's. Earlier that day I popped into my beloved building materials closeout store and picked up a couple of pieces of narrow crown molding that matched the wide crown I used for the whole house. Normally you wouldn't want crown for this because it has edges that bevel in so you can put it where the wall joins the ceiling, but I figured if I added a little piece of base cap on the top and sat the bottom over the Lauan, it would work fine. So Howard had 4 sheets of Lauan ($9.97 each) cut into 29" long strips for me and brought me 16 pieces of Coronado Chair rail and about 44 feet of base cap in 12' and 8' lengths ($.85 a foot). I did a little planning and assembled my materials down stairs.

Side view of crown moulding. The angled in edges are
actually ok for this project because the bottom will sit on the Lauan and the base cap will sit on top.

Figuring out the total height of the project was easy. Wainscoting should be done in proportion to your ceiling height, and 36" is standard for standard 8-9' ceilings. Since our ceilings are 11', I decided to go with 42", which was, incidentally, exactly waist high on my very tall husband. Yay! External validation! So that's how I ended up with the 29" strips. 42" - 8" base board - 5" top moulding width = 29".

 I measured all of the wall lengths very carefully and went about deciding how big the rectangles needed to be. I knew I wanted a vertically elongated rectangle, so I started by figuring out how much space I wanted between the squares and between the edge of the Lauan. I decided on 4.5", which left me rectangles 20" in height. Figuring out the width, however, was tricky. When you're trying to do wainscoting, you ideally want to cover wall space with a certain number of basically equal size rectangles, since it would be funny to have a tiny one at the end to cover a leftover space.  This was a job for..... MATH!

(deep breath)

So i figured out a formula to represent how many squares of a certain size could go on any given length of wall. I started with an idea of 15" wide just to see how that would work. I knew I would probably have to adjust up or down to make them fit on the different walls.

wall length = certain # of (panel width 15 + space width 4.5) + one extra space width for the end 4.5
                                                      
So what that means is I subtracted 4.5 from all of my wall lengths then divided by 19.5 to see what I would get. The goal was not to get a remainder at all. On the first wall, I figured out that 20.75 gave me 8 panels with no remainder. Thus 16.25" wide panels. On the next wall 19.75 gave me 6 panels with no remainder, so 15.25" panels. And on third major wall, 21.25" was the magic number, so 16.75" panels there. I filled the 3 small wall spaces the same way. Then down to the basement to make the cuts.

After laying out all of my trim I made all of the cuts for the frames and labeled them with a pencil. This took quite a long time, but it was pretty easy. Just basic 90 degree angle cuts. And because the trim was symmetrical top to bottom, you don't end up with a bunch of wasted triangles. The leftover angle from on cut makes the angle for the next cut.

Then I measured my wall width at 42" up, just to be sure, and cut the upper trim (narrow crown moulding plus the base cap) accordingly. Once everything was cut, I brought it all upstairs and started my installation.

I nailed on the Lauan first. This was pretty easy, although I learned you really need to hammer the nails in at a bit of an angle or they will pull out of the drywall. Mr. Delta offered to buy me a nailgun for this project, but I didn't really want one. They're really loud and kind of scary. And about $400 for a good cordless one. I'm sure I'll get there, but I'm just not ready to make the plunge quite yet. So I nailed everything by hand. Nailgun is actually looking appealing now. It's a lot of work to have to go back and "sink" all of the finish nails below the wood surface ( you have to hit them with a larger nail).

After I got the Lauan on the wall, I made sure there was no "wiggle" in the seams, then I filled the cracks with putty and sanded. Next, I had Mr. Delta prime the surface with 2 coats of flat white paint and a foam roller (smooth roller is very important!). Then I added on the crown moulding and base cap to the top and used painters caulk in the seams between all the connecting pieces (base cap, crown, Lauan, baseboard). Finally, I measured with a laser level and marked where the panel frames would go. Then I nailed them all on, filled the holes and cracks with caulk, and we were ready to paint. I opted for 2 coats of semi-gloss in an off-white color to match the other trim in the room.



And finally, finally, finally! I am proud to announce that as of 2 days ago we are done!

Total cost = $170

"Before" shot of dining room. Pre-crown moulding, pre-wainscotting. The only trim is the baseboard.

"After" 

Close up of the finished project. See how the Lauan just sits right on top of the base board? And the base cap just sits right on the crown moulding and everything is caulked together.

Dealing with the corner and the bay window was a bit tricky. I just decided to wrap the trim around the bay window corner and bring it to meet the frame.  To do this you have to figure out what your angle is (145 degrees here) then subtract from 180 and divide by 2. So 17.5 degrees was what the cut was to make the trim wrap like this. 

This is how I dealt with the bay window. I've seen it done where the paneling is actually done below the window and brought up in between the windows, but I think it ends up looking like a Poseidon trident more often than not. So I decided just to keep it clean and showcase the window. I'm going to be making some silk panels to flank the window, so I think it will be a great effect when I get it all done.

I'm desperate for a new chandelier though (to match my new fancy walls, of course!) I love this one, (Delilah Collection from Crystorama) but the $900 price tag is a bit off-putting. Maybe I can wait for a coupon code. What do you think? Worth it?

Cheers!

Juliet

Lesson 3. If they can do it, so can I: How I Built a Wall

 I have always strived to be able to do things for myself. When I want to do something, I want to do it right then and I don't want anything to stand in my way, even if that thing is not knowing how to do the thing I want to do. So needless to say I have picked up a lot of random skills over the years. But the idea of actually building (nails, wood, saws - eeek!!!) has always intimidated me. After learning to cut crown molding and becoming comfortable with using the electric saw (and ladies, if there is a girl-friendly saw out there, it's definitely the miter saw) I finally decided that it might be time for me to face my fears with a small construction project that I have been tossing around the windmills of my mind for a few weeks now.

Floorplan of living and dining rooms

This is how it all began. When I started this project, all I wanted to do was add some simple wall frames in our living room.

Wall frames in the living room. I chose a simplified style and just did one frame sized to fit 13" in from the outer parameters of the wall space.

This turned out to be a problem, however, because our living room and dining room are set up as semi-separate rooms, which drives me nuts because, among other things, you end up having to paint them both the same color because there is no real dividing wall. But in this case, the problem was that there was no way to put frames on the common wall because there is no stopping point between the two rooms. So we had a frameless wall which looked funny. On top of that, I really wanted to try to put in some waist high wainscot paneling to dress up the dining room, but once again, because the common wall had no inter-room divider, there was no point at which you could stop the paneling. So one day our handy man was over fixing a window and I asked him what it would take to build a tiny little dividing wall between the two rooms. He told me, "Hmm... a few 2x4's and some drywall. I bet you could do it yourself, Juliet." I didn't really take him seriously at first, but somehow later that afternoon my car just sort of mysteriously started steering its way over to Lowe's and the next thing I knew I was loading 4 8" long 2x4's and a sheet of drywall cut into fourths into the the back of my coupe.  I could not exist without my fabulous fold-down seats. Thank you, German engineering.

Plan to add the new dividing wall

So, as instructed, I plotted the place on the wall where I wanted my new wall to go. I measured and decided it needed to be 6" thick and 25" wide to match the other wall segment. I took the 2x4's and basically made what looked like a ladder 24" wide and almost as tall as the ceiling. Using the stud finder, I figured out where the studs were in the wall and used long screws to attach the frame to the wall. Then I took my drywall sheets (conveniently already 24" wide from being split at Lowe's to fit in my car) and screwed them onto the frame. Some of them had to be cut more, but it was  really very easy. All you do is get a knife and a straight edge and make a little score, then you can fold it and it breaks clean. Cut the backing paper on the other side and you're ready to go.

Half constructed wall. What a mess.

Once I had all the drywall on, I filled the seams with drywall putty and sanded. Then I replaced the crown molding and baseboard sections and painted the whole thing. Viola! I made a wall!!! Can you believe it? And now we have 2 rooms - not just a uniroom!

Picture of the new separating wall looking from the living room into the dining room. The other wall segment is just peeking out at the upper right edge of the photo.  The dining room wainscoting has already been installed in this picture, but I actually put it in right after the wall was completed. Details on that in my next post!!!