Wainscoting

Remember my work in the Loft? Those four columns I built to house surround speakers left a lot of extra trim material in my garage. I am not one to throw much away, so for each of the 2 3/4" x 1/2" x 8' pine trim boards I used to build the columns, I had left over maybe 25 boards that were about 1/8" thick.

When I was building the columns, I couldn't find lumber that was the right thickness for the trim. So what I decided to do was run them all through my table saw, standing vertically, to cut the thickness down from a 1/2" board, to about 3/8". The problem with this was that running boards through a table saw on end like this makes it difficult to get dimensional lumber. In fact one side of the board might be 1/64" or 1/32" thicker on a side than the other. I made it work for the columns, but I wasn't exactly happy with how things lined up--sometimes.

For the Morning Room, I felt that a craftsman style wainscoting would look pretty nice. But I wanted it to be higher than usual, chest-height, or apprx. bar-height. That leftover wood would do nicely, I thought, except as I started to cut pieces and put them into place on the wall, that 1/32" off really made the wainscoting looked awful! Chatting about this with a friend of mine, he mentioned he had a planer, and that I could borrow it.

Damn! A planer? I've got to get me one of those!!!

If only I had thought to use one of these for the columns. Well, I packed up the 25 boards and headed over to his place and after running them through, we were able to shave each down to dimensional accuracy, and all of them the same thickness!

The next day I began cutting them and putting them in place, using a little caulking and a pin nailer along the way.

After getting them all in place, I used about a full tube of caulk to fill in the edges, and then began painting all of it with Ultra-White, Semi-Gloss paint.

The photos below aren't the best, I apologize, but hopefully you will be able to see the contours of the wainscoting. Also, once we got the wainscoting painted, we decide to paint the walls above a light gray color. This color was "Warm Chinchilla" which we got at Lowe's. My SOE picked that color, but honestly it really goes well! I think it connects with the gray/black/white speckle of the granite we opted for (even though we don't like the granite any more).

3 comments:

UnknownOctober 8, 2014 at 6:50 AM
Your work is absolutely amazing! You give me soooo many ideas. I hope to pull some of them off once we move in. Thank you for the great posts!
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*colette*October 21, 2014 at 9:58 AM
It looks awesome!! You have so much energy!! I need to to come over and pimp out the (lack of) trim in my house. I love that paint color too!
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