We had such an eventful week getting home and recovering from the kitchen makeover we did for the sweetest couple in Baltimore–thank you for all the love on that reveal! We rested and worked from bed for two solid days (just long enough for my ankles to return to a normal size–haha!) before we felt enough energy to break out the nail gun, miter saw and caulk once again to add some pretty dreamy trim to the nursery walls.
As a refresher, here’s where the room was last week! So clean, so…plain.
There’s a million different ways and styles to add wainscoting to walls. We actually first looked to the height of the crib we had picked out for the room, because one thing we didn’t want was for the top of the crib to line up exactly with the top of the wainscoting, creating an uncomfortable tangent. Our crib is 36″ tall and we decided to make our chair molding a few inches higher than that.
Before we added any of the fun stuff, we had a few repairs to make. This room still had a phone jack in it (!?), so we removed that and used one of these handy self-sticking wall repair mesh squares and joint compound to fill in the space. And removed the old, smaller existing trim work around the room, too.
Metrie is one of the sponsors for the One Room Challenge and we had never worked with them before, nor were we obligated to at this time, but we are really impressed with the trim options and styles they had available online. This room had a few tricky areas–including an off-centered, large window–and we were able to to talk to the wainscoting pros before we ordered about what would work best in this room. We went with their Fashion Forward line which felt simple, but still impactful.
We started with the window and doorway and quickly moved onto baseboards and then finished our first trim day with crown molding. Crown molding is notoriously tricky, but our Kobalt miter saw comes with crown stops which hold it in place and make it much easier to get the right cuts. Love that thing.
In the morning, we started on the more detail specific wainscoting detailing. We decided to keep 2″ gap next to the walls and 3″ in between each box. We measured each wall, and subtracted the buffering inches, to determine how many panels each wall would accommodate if they were all the same size. We determined 3 was the magic number on the shorter walls and 4 on the window wall with each box being 33″ wide.
We kept a small level and measuring tape handy to keep the spacing just right and attached each trim piece using a bead of liquid nails and securing it into place with the brad nailer. Sidenote: Chris only wears his hat backward when his face is thiiissss close to the wall for a long time. Haha
With every piece of trim, the room was looking larger, which was a surprise to me. I think it’s because the room was starting to have depth to it. The other realization I started having was, this is gonna take a lot of caulk!
I put on a few of my favorite podcasts and the entire room took me about 4 hours to caulk and fill in nail holes. The difference may be minor in pictures now, especially before we paint, but the above was taken before caulking. And below is after:
Seams be gone! Something else that I should point out (or shouldn’t, because that’s all you’ll see in this photo now)–the trim that meets under the window is the same size, but this time of day, the shadow is hitting the inside trim on the left panel and the outside trim on the right, making them look like two different sizes. I had to go take my tape measure to it because I almost had a panic attack.
Wallpaper is going in later this week, which means we have a short window to get everything painted (and cleaned up for goodness sakes) before that gets installed. Catch sneak peeks of it over on my instagram, @chrislovesjulia, and we’ll be ready to show that off in next week’s check in.
If you missed week 1, where we spill our plans, you can check out that post here.
Check in on the other ORC participants below!
Centsational Girl | Chris Loves Julia | Christine Dovey | Dwell With Dignity | The English Room
Glitter Guide | House of Brinson | House Updated | J+J Design Group | Lark & Linen | Abby Manchesky
Nesting Place | Old Brand New | Old Home Love | The Pink Pagoda | Rambling Renovators
Erica Reitman | Sketch 42 | Suburban B’s | Erin Williamson Media Partner House Beautiful | TM by CIH
That before and after is really a nice, classic, and elegant improvement. Nothing wrong with the before, but when you compare it to the after, it really elevates the impression the room gives.
I had a couple of quick questions. I have a similar situation with a wall largely dominated by a fairly tall window with a chair rail (i.e., there’s 9 inches from the bottom of the moulding around the window to the top of the baseboard). I love how y’all made contiguous the wainscoting the to the left and right of the window with a portion that reaches under the window. To make sure I understand the measurements, do you know the height of the sheetrock between the bottom of the moulding around the window and the top of the baseboard in your application? And when you say you did 3 inches between the boxes, does that mean 3 inches at top and bottom as well? If so, with my measurements, do you think I could get away with 2 inches so as to leave 5 inches as the “height” of the wainscoting under the window or is that just too close?
Thanks for the pictures and awesome ideas!
Do you guys have textured walls? I’d love to do some wainscoting and wallpaper in my home but my husband is wary since we have orange peel walls.
We do have a light orange peel texture.
Is the wall repair patch you got the kind with a big metal piece in it? I followed your link to order, but it looks like yours doesn’t have that part. Also did you have trouble getting the grid to not show through?
It does have the metal webbing. It can be tricky to get it perfectly smooth, but I would say to plan on doing one layer, allowing it to dry completely, then sanding and adding another layer (with drying and sanding). Though we’re not huge fans of the orange peel texture in our home, that is one of the benefits – it helps hide things like that as well.
Just wanted to clarify a question about this sentence…
“We determined 3 was the magic number on the shorter walls and 4 on the window wall with each box being 33″ wide.”
Are all the boxes 33″ wide, or just the ones on the window wall?
They are all approx 33″.
So timely! Apartment Therapy just posted an article about how wainscoting is one way to make a room classy and beautiful!! (Post: The (Totally Doable) European Secret to Beautiful Rooms). Love it!