My True Love Gave to Me....{Wainscoting}

I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that the main portion of our house is one great, big room. We only have one hall way in our house. The rest is a completely open concept. In this one large room, we have an even larger ceiling. When building the house, my husband decided he wanted vaulted ceilings to make the room seem larger. This is a great concept, except if made this one wall seem so vast and empty.

On top of that, everything in the house was painted Antique White. Don't get me wrong, I love a good antique white paint - just not on every surface in the house! That is exactly why I started painting as soon as we got married. However, I wasn't allowed to paint the living room at the time. The largest space in the house! Jason said it would be too much of a hassle to paint all the way to the ceiling - 13+ feet high - plus the house was only 2 years old at the time. So, I put painting that room on the back burner for a few years.

Enter Pinterest!

This past year, I saw a picture on Pinterest of how to decorate a small entry space. They simply added wainscoting to the wall adjacent the front door. How simple is that? I showed Jason, and he thought it sounded like a good idea. Then I found the piece that tied it all together. I found this amazing tutorial on how to build door casings. I fell in love with this door immediately!

We have an over-sized door way leading into our hall. Without any trim or molding, the door has always looked so empty. I tried adding a large window above the door to draw your eyes up, but it didn't really do anything for the space. The wall just blended together with the ceiling, creating a dreary space. For months I've had my eyes set on re-creating this door casing from The Charming Nest. You can find their tutorial here.

Finally Jason said yes! Our goal was to have it finished before Marshall's first birthday which was back in October. I'm proud to say we met our deadline!

This is how we started off in our Living Room.

Before:

This is the main wall...

And this is the entry wall....

How we did it

We had MDF boards that were the perfect width just laying around our attic. Since this is a low moisture room, we decided to go ahead with the FREE MDF since there wouldn't be any chance of warping due to moisture exposure. Here is a step by step guide of what we did:

First Step:
Measure out how tall you want your wainscoting as well as how wide you want each square. Don't forget to factor in the width of your cross beams you'll be using. We used 1"x6" since that's what we had on hand. Plus our wall was so large, I thought wider planks would look better for our space. If using on a small wall or in a small space like a bathroom, I would suggest going with 1x4 boards.

Second Step:
We skimmed the wall with a thin sheet of MDF material Jason had left over from a job he had done. We wanted to create a smooth surface, and not have the wall texture showing. We simply attached the sheets with a nail gun. Just be careful to make sure any seams you have will be hidden behind the beams you will be running.

 

Third Step:
Attach the cross beam sections with a nail gun. Try to hit as many studs as you can while nailing. It will help to ensure your wainscoting stays secure. Start with the horizontal beams first. Make those your continuous (non-cut) sections. Then measure and cut your vertical sections and attach.

Fourth Step:
Add the top shelf. We used a 1"x2" board as our shelf, and simply nailed it to the top of the wainscoting.

Fifth Step:
My favorite part - PAINT! We chose a bright white, semi-gloss paint. I wanted it to stand out and also be a different sheen from the wall. We just used Behr Premium Bright White paint. We didn't even use an entire gallon for this one wall. I will warn you if you're using MDF or any non-primed surface, it will take about 3 coats of paint.

Next, we followed The Charming Nest Door Casing Tutorial and added our door casing. The only thing we did differently was change the bottom. We didn't do the extra step-out molding that they did. It was just faster to continue the 1x6 from the wainscoting around the door versus trying to figure out how to tie the step-out molding into the wainscoting.

Finally, I had to pick out the perfect blue to go above the wainscoting. After multiple samples, I finally chose a color I had used before in our house. I went with Behr's Offshore Mist. It's a pale blue with some grey undertones. I love this color! It really brightens up the space, makes the white wainscoting pop, and creates an airy feeling to our room making it seem much larger. What's not to like??

After all of this, we finally ended up with our perfect wall....