A How-to DIY Wainscoting - Guest post from my Hubby

I've been wanting to start posting our DIY projects and before and after shots of things we've done to our home for a while now, but haven't found time... I'm finally getting around to it. Luckily, with this post, my husband and dad did all the work and I don't know how they did it in detail, so Taylor's sweet self is here to tell you all about it. I was 9 months pregnant when we did her room, in fact, Winnie was born 3 short weeks later. This is the beginning of hopefully many posts on house projects we do, but for now, I hope this post helps you with giving your rooms a little something extra. Have fun, be careful (especially using those saws), and enjoy! - Stephanie

How-to DIY Wainscoting

Taylor here... when Steph and I found out that our first child was going to be our Winnie, she knew that she wanted wainscoting in the nursery; and I was more than happy to make it happen.

What you'll need:

• Wood [we used white wood from Lowe's]
• Chop saw
• Jigsaw
• Caulk
• Nail gun
• Drill
• Level
• Tape measure
• Sandpaper 
• Primer
• White paint

The first thing you need to do is decide on is how high you want the rail, the width of the wood, the depth of the shelf, and the spacing between the vertical boards. Once that is decided, its time to get to work. Here are the measurements we decided on:

• The vertical boards were 4ft long & 3.5in wide [We got "4in width," but the wood was 1/2 an inch smaller than advertised] 
• The rail was 3.5in wide
• The shelf was 2.5in deep... or wide... depending on your angle
• For the spacing between the vertical boards, we just eyeballed it and went with what we liked 

 [Steph's parents were in town and were a HUGE help]

The first step is to cut the wood to size. Three side notes here:

• We cut 45 degree angles on the bottom of the vertical boards, so the vertical boards would meet flush to the top ledge of the baseboard
• We also cut 45 degree angels on the edges of the shelf to make sure there were no sharp edges
• We had vertical boards flush with the window frames and used a jigsaw to cut out the windowsill edge 

After everything is cut its time to start putting wood on the wall. For the rail I found studs and drilled it into the studs with wood screws. We then put the 2.5in shelf on top of the rail. For that, we measured out the size we needed, cut the wood to size, cut the 45 degree angles on the ends, then nailed them in with the nail gun. [you may have to re-cut them in the corners so they fit just right]

Now for the vertical boards it was a little different. Because of the spacing between the boards and wanting them to be even/symmetric, we put a line of caulk on the back of each vertical piece [using the caulk as glue] then nailed it to the wall using the nail gun. 

Here is the finished result for one side of the room: 

 

After we got all the wood up we sanded down everything. 

After everything was sanded we caulked the edges [where the wood meets the walls and to fill gaps where the wood meets each other] of all the boards [we don't have any action shots, but if you look closely in the pictures below the boards have have a line of caulk where they meet the wall]. After that... we painted. 

The room was Carolina Blue before we started, so we already had two coats of primer on the walls; but we needed to put a coat of primer on the wood as well, because we painted everything from the wainscoting down, white.

While John and Sandy painted primer, Steph and I painted the wall above a very light purple: 

My beautiful bride, 9mo pregnant and adamant to help :) 

After many [many...] coats of primer & paint, this was the finished product [feel free to ignore the paint tape and crib]: 

In recap, here are a couple tips I found to be helpful:

• Measure twice [or 3 or 4 times] cut once
• Keep the chop saw up in the room [we put it on a clear tarp to keep the sawdust off the carpet], because you will have to make additional cuts 
• Have a blast 

That's all I have for ya. Keep posted, because Steph's next blog will show the finished product for the whole nursery.