Wainscoting - A Beginner's Guide
If you want to add a touch of class to your home then faux wainscotting is a great way to achieve this. If you feel that your room lacks that extra "something" then adding more furniture will probably just make it look more cluttered. Some people go the route of adding more wall art and this can make the clutter problem even worse and not better at all! Faux wainscotting offers a way of adding to the room without taking away from the free space in the room itself. In years gone by faux wainscoting was only ever handled by a professional decorator. Nowadays things are different and you don't need to pay a professional to install your wainscoting - you can do it yourself. This offers you the maximum level of design control and the biggest savings - the best of both worlds if you like.
Even if you don't know how to install faux wainscoting, you'll find that it really isn't that tough or difficult. You just need to make sure that you take your time and take care when working on the project. The first thing that you need to do is fairly self explanatory - but make sure that you measure the height of your room, and then figure out how much wainscotting you're going to need to cover the room.
The height of your room is important as that will help you determine how high the faux wainscoting needs to be. Roughly speaking, you'll want the wainscoting to be a little lower than half-way up your wall. Generally, the wainscoting will be between 32 and 60 inches in height. In a room that has a normal or standard ceiling height, you'll want to go with a shorter wainscotting to keep the final product looking well.
If this is going to be a DIY wainscotting project shop in a reliable home improvement store and ideally you'll be looking for panelled or plybead wainscoting stock.
Once the room is measured you can then go about finding the right color and style of wainscoting for your decor project. To actually install the wainscoting, you will want to make sure that it locks into place properly at the baseboard/skirting board of the wall. First, take the baseboards off of your walls. Then you should put on your new baseboards. This will help give you a far more "polished" effect when finished.
When you're done with that, you should start adding the panels. The best way that you can do that is to spread the glue with a trowel, and then put the panels up on the wall. Another suggestion is to nail the panels up as well - this just adds more strength. You will not need a lot of nails - these are not going to hold the panels in place forever. Instead the nails are just to hold the panels up until the glue dries. Finally, if there are any gaps left between the panels, you can fill those with caulk.
By Niall Roche
Always wanted to faux paint but didn't know where to start? Why not read more about faux wainscotting and other interior painting ideas at PaintSplashes.
