Wainscoting--a tutorial

After 

Before (technically during)

A few folks have asked us how we did our wainscoting project because they'd like to tackle something similar, so I thought I would make a "tutorial" of sorts to help explain what we did. 

We got the idea to add wainscoting to our home after being tired of staring at the HUGE yellow wall on our staircase. I toyed with the idea of a gallery wall, etc, but just could never get excited about the concept. We then thought of wainscoting, and saw it could be done on a meager budget and was a DIY project we thought we could tackle.

The project cost approximately $300 and took about 2 weeks to complete (not working on it every day because of work, travel, and...let's be honest...laziness).

Here's what you'll need:

• Miter saw 
• 16 gauge and 18 gauge brad nailers with appropriate nails
• Level
• Hammer 
• White paint (and brushes) 
• Painter's tape
• Liquid Nails
• Paintable caulk 
• 8 ft sections of paint-grade pine chair rail (we got ours at Lowes)
• 8 ft sections of pine quarter-round (also picked this up at Lowes)
• Math skills
• Patience

First thing's first: we needed some inspiration. Here are the photos we found on Pinterest that most closely matched our house layout and became our "inspiration" photos. We found ourselves referencing them a lot, so I would take the time to surf the net to find one or two photos that very closely resemble the look you're trying to achieve. 

Next, we measured. And re-measured. And then measured again just in case. We then drew an accurate picture of the space, taking the time to note any outlets (where they are located is important later on).

For each section of wall, you first decide the number of frames you think would look good in the space. (This is where we constantly referenced our inspiration photos to see how many they used in similarly sized areas). 

We decided we universally wanted 3 inches of empty space on either side of each frame. This actually worked really well for us, regardless of the number of frames on a wall section or their relative size. So. Now it's time to do some simple math to figure out the size of your frames. 

For example: This wall section above was 98 inches long. We decided we wanted 3 frames in this space. That meant we needed 12 inches of empty space (in order to have 3 inches of empty space on either side of each frame). We subtracted 12 from 98 and got 86 inches. Then you divide that by 3 (since you are putting 3 frames in that space), and voila! Each frame should be 28.6 inches long. 

We repeated this process for every wall section, and used painter's tape to eyeball what it would look like to make sure we were doing the math correctly. You also need to ensure you won't end up in the middle of an outlet with the edge of your frame. On this wall, we originally had planned for 4 frames, but one would have had an edge in the middle of that outlet, so we changed to 3. This was a little bit of a painful/tedious process, especially on the stairs. 

For the stairs, you have the added bonus of figuring out the angle. We broke out a high school protractor and discovered our stairs were at a 40 degree angle. We then did a similar measurement process as above, just making sure we kept our lines parallel and perpendicular. Your eye does funny things to you when measuring on an angle! 

To measure the height, we honestly just eyeballed where we thought would look good and put painter's tape there. Then we just ensured we were level all the way around. We wanted 3 inches of empty space above and below each frame, so to calculate the height you need for your frames, you take the total height of the space and subtract 6 inches. 

Make sure you constantly use a level to be absolutely certain all your measurements are accurate. It saves a bunch of time later if you're sure you're doing this correctly! We marked everything with pencil so we could remove the painter's tape.

We also went around the space with a stud finder and marked the location of studs. You can only nail into a stud! 

I then painted one coat of gloss white paint in the whole space while I didn't have frames in my way. I could have easily used a roller, but I find paintbrush painting to cover better and waste less paint (and I'm cheap and wanted to only buy one can!) We used a all-in-one paint and primer. 

Then it's time to take all your measurements down to the garage and start cutting your frames. I'm going to talk about the rectangle frames first (not the ones on the stairs, because those were parallelograms and are more complicated--I'll explain that in a minute). For the basic rectangle frames, you want to cut the pieces at 45 degree angles so they can fit together well. Remember as you are buying supplies that there will be some waste---quarter round comes in 8 ft sections, but you will not be able to use all 8 feet. And you'll likely mess up sometimes, so I'd err on the side of buying too much quarter-round and chair rail. You'll thank me when you're not making your second trip to Lowes... 

If you're cutting a bunch of pieces that are the same length, you can make a jig from an old piece of wood and clamp it at the right spot to save yourself some measuring time (see above). 

Once you have all your pieces cut (and labeled! Do yourself a favor and write the measurement of the piece on the wood itself!), it's time to put them together. To do this, you just need to make a simple jig by nailing a block of wood onto a flat piece of plywood. This allows you to easily and quickly create right angles for your frames. You then just dab both pieces with wood glue, clamp down the piece of wood that will be receiving the nail (we found two clamps to be necessary), and use your 18 gauge nailer to drive a nail right through the frame. This will likely take you a few tries before you get the hang of EXACTLY where to place the nail. We ruined about 6 frames before we got it right (seriously) because a nail would go slightly sideways, too high, too low, etc. 

You'll then end up with a bunch of cool-lookin' rectangle frames, ready to go up on the wall. 

For the chair rail, you just measure the amount you need for a wall, and use your miter saw to make the appropriate cuts. For end pieces, you'll need to make a simple straight cut, and for pieces that need to meet up, you'll need to make 45 degree cuts. Remember, you'll need to use your stud markings to nail the chair rail in directly where a stud is located. We applied Liquid Nails (a wall adhesive) to the chair rail, and then used an 16 gauge nail gun to nail it in at the studs. 

To nail up the frames, we applied Liquid Nails, measured once again to ensure everything was level, and then nailed in the frames at the studs using an 18 gauge nailer. If your walls are not quite level, you may need to lean something against the frame until the adhesive dries to ensure it is flush with the wall, since you can only put nails where there are studs. We made some pretty creative sculptures trying to make this work in places!

Once that step is done, it's time to caulk. Caulk is amazing. Every imperfection becomes MUCH less visible once you caulk. For those who haven't done it before, you essentially run a bead of it along every edge and then use your finger to run along the side and remove any excess. This is crucial for places where you couldn't quite get the frame flush with the wall no matter how hard you tried. 

Okay. So. Now for the hard part--figuring out the angles/frames for the stairs. Like we mentioned before, we used a protractor to figure out that our stairs were at a 40 degree angle. Using that knowledge and some trig, we were able to discover that the smaller angles of our parallelograms would be 50 degrees, and the larger angles would be 130 degrees. If you need some help figuring out what these angles would be for your house, let us know, and we'll try to help you. I've included our drawing here as a reference. 

We then made our frames in much the same way, except cutting at these angles we'd measured, and assembling with only clamps and wood glue rather than with nails. We had no way of figuring out how to get the nails in exactly straight, so we didn't mess with it. 

We then nailed them in (after measuring for the 300th time!) on the studs, like we did for the flat sections. 

One other weird section was the bottom of the stairs. We had a lot of headaches trying to figure out what to do here. The wall here is not at a 90 degree angle, making it tough to turn the corner and mate the two pieces of chair rail together. It is actually at a 135 degree angle (again, we used our trusty protractor to help measure!). Instead of mating the two pieces directly, we made a transition piece that  wrapped around the corner on one side, and mated with the sloping chair rail going up the stairs. If you need more detail on how we created that piece (it was a little complicated), let us know. Matt was confusing me just trying to explain how to write about it here, so I'll spare you from that unless you need it... 

Once your frames are all nailed in place and your chair rail is up, you simply caulk around each edge, fill any nail holes with wood putty, and apply a final coat (or two coats if needed) of white gloss paint. 

So that's how we did it! It took us about two weeks and we are really happy with the result. Let us know if you have any other questions about doing this in your home--we totally recommend it if you're willing to do some math and use power tools.