Wainscoting

The wife wants something like this in the dining room.

Is this usually done with just strips of molding tacked onto the the drywall below a chair rail, or is there a more elegant way to do it?

Thanks.

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Reply to
Buck Turgidson
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Reply to
The3rd Earl Of Derby

exclude elegance. ;)

Reply to
TBM

Try again. It's there. White wainscotting with pale yellow walls.

Reply to
Bill

best, is to simply attach molding as you mentioned. Another way would be to attach the molding to plywood and install it as panels. A more traditional way is to make a frame of 1x material, inset, 1/4" plywood and use panel molding to cover the transition.

Simply applying the molding to drywall looks a bit flat on the wall. The added depth of the frame and panel method is well worth the price of admission. Kreg has a nice way to do it on one of their DVDs.

R
Reply to
RicodJour

It looks like this is done more or less as you describe but there may be a wood paneling under the molding.

When we are asked to do something similar we often panel the wall with

1/4" ply then rail and stile the boxes with 3/4" ply then use a panel molding to frame inside the squares. This adds a little depth to the panels and IMO looks better than molding applied to a flat wall. The molding for the 3/4" offset is very common and usually available at a good lumber yard or millwork. Of course this method is quite a bit more labor and material.

If you want to spend more money yet, for an even more elegant look, you can raise panel the whole thing.

Mike O.

Reply to
Mike O.

And yet another method is paint above wall paper below. There aren't any hard and fast rules about the materials. The only considerations are what you like, how much money you want to spend and how much work your willing to do.

wodbutchr

Reply to
wodbuchr

That would also require some additional molding to hide the seems of the panels.... not quite the same look.

Reply to
Locutus

I just did this in my foyer and dining room. Measure out how many frames you need and the spacing, and then pre-make the frames in the shop, glue and brads, then use panel adhesive held in place with 1.1/2 inch brads into the drywall to hold it until the adhesive dries (you will likely not have studs to nail to. Drywall is not always flat, so a small bead of latex caulk will be needed on the interior and exterior edges of each panel to fill the gaps. Its not all that bad, just time consuming. Also, consider the "golden rectangle" for sizing, DAGS "golden rectangle".

Mutt

Reply to
Pig

too many panels on the wall. I think it looks better with two small panels and one oblong panel on each wall to give the room an overall eveness appearence.

Rather than a Jacobian/Georgian look.

Reply to
The3rd Earl Of Derby

When you say plywood, do you mean like a smooth MDF type? Ordinary plywood sounds a bit rough.

I'll look into ordering that DVD. It looks interesting.

Reply to
Buck Turgidson

MDF isn't plywood. There are many grades of plywood. He isn't referring to construction grade plywood.

Reply to
Locutus

You can make the frames out of MDF (medium density fiberboard), 1x stock, MDO (medium density overlay), furniture grade plywood, or even PTS (patch and touch sanded) plywood if you're painting it and don't mind doing a little more prep work. Buy the DVD on eBay, watch it, turn around and sell it on eBay. The net cost will be about the price of shipping.

R
Reply to
RicodJour

You don't do single raised panels with joints between frames.

You do entire wall sections assembled at once with several panels in the same frame. The stile between panels is cut on both sides to accept the panels. There are no joints to cover.

Mike O.

Reply to
Mike O.

Maybe I am not following, but there are no stiles on the image he provided. Which is what I was referring to.

Reply to
Locutus

To quote the OP,

"The wife wants something like this in the dining room. Is this usually done with just strips of molding tacked onto the drywall below a chair rail, or is there a more elegant way to do it?"

Thee "more elegant way to do it" part is what I was responding to.:-)

Mike O.

Reply to
Mike O.

The last one that I did was this:

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It was a bit more complicated because of the rise and the curve but the principles are the same.

I cut the stiles and rails out of MDF, using the cope and stick cutters on the shaper. The MDF was just thick enough so that I got the fingernail profile and the cope that I wanted to keep, but did not include the plough to receive the raised panel (which I tucked under the profile by using a buildup strip behind, that was set back from the edge of the fingernail profile by a quarter inch).

If you are going for a flat panel look, it is really easy.

Just make up your runs of stiles and rails and start nailing and gluing.

What I've done on similar jobs is take out the 1/2" drywall below the line of the top of the frames and replace it with birch ply or 1/2" MDF. The birch ply gives you a better nailing surface than the MDF, as nailing MDF to MDF gives you a lot of bounce back and the nails don't set as well as they do when going into the birch ply.

The half inch base will look a little starved, in my opinion, but if that is what is going on everywhere else it should look OK.

If you use MDF for the baseboard, hold it up about a half inch from the floor, so that any spillage of water will not wick up. The gap can be covered by a nice wood quarter round or shoe molding.

The cap can be a little difficult to find good nailing for and making it wide enough to take a scotia or similar apron molding can really help this out.

I think you will be happy with how quickly this kind of project can go. I used to prefinish everything and just do touchups of the nail holes when finished. On a couple of projects I just glued the pieces on with DAP. It worked pretty good.

I forgot to say anything about design and layout.

Let's say that the length of the wall is eight feet.

Let's say that the height of the wainscot is 36" (I've always thought that a wainscot looked best if it was a bit more than one third of the height of the wall).

Let's say that you have a 1" cap and a 3/4" apron.

Let's say that you expose 2" of the top rail (which will actually be

2" plus the 3/4" that the apron will lay on, or 2-3/4") and 2-1/4" of the bottom rail ( which will actually be 2-1/4" plus the 4-1/2" of the baseboard, remembering the 1/2" that we are leaving above the floor, for a total width of 6-3/4").

Lets say that you have a baseboard assembly that is 5" high (including the shoe, and allowing for the half inch gap at the floor).

You will wind up with a panel ( or what looks like a panel) that is

25" high.

Most folks like the Golden Rectangle, which is a simplified ratio of about 1 to 1.6.

I prefer that the vertical is the 1.6 part, so the ideal panel would be the given of 25" high by the theoretical 15-5/8" wide.

If your stiles are 2", the greatest number of 15-5/8" panels that you can fit on an eight foot wall is 5.

If you make your panels 15-5/8", this will give you 78-1/8" of panels.

96" of wall length, minus 78-1/8" of panels, will leave you 17-7/8" of stiles, which will be split equally into six pieces - for a stile width of almost 3" - No good.

Do the math the other way, keeping your stiles at 2", and you will get

12" total width of stiles, leaving 84" of total panel width, divided into five panels, giving you a unit panel width of 16-51/64".

Although it is not perfect, it should give you the best approximation of the look that you want.

I've always preferred to adjust the panel width and keep the stile width the same throughout the room, as I think it gives more rhythm to the installation.

Regards,

Tom Watson

tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

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Reply to
Tom Watson

I realize this is a dated post but, to expand upon this message, i

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-- Hans G.

Reply to
Hans G.

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