Installing Beadboard Wainscoting

When we first found this house we knew we could make it pretty again. It was hugely out of date and needed a lot of tender loving care!  My honey never cares how I decorate he just makes all my wild ideas come to be.  In case I don't say it enough, he's the best! :)

This is how our dining room looks currently.  Well, not exactly, now there are Fall decorations up, but mostly it looks like this.
This is what it looked like when we toured it for a possible purchase.  Whoa, talk about flash back to the 80's!  So much lovely green wallpaper and oh just look at the popcorn ceiling!  We told ourselves that it was all cosmetic and could be made to look good again, and so we did, slowly but surely.

All the ugly green paper came down and the walls got textured and painted with a coat of primer.  Bobby's Dad helped us out so much!  He's texturing the walls with a WalMart sack, who knew!  He just blots the texture on a pretty good sized section of the wall, then goes back over it with a large trowel and knocks down the peaks and makes it smoother. I love it!  You can see a faint blue line about his knee level.  That is where the wainscoting and chair rail will be so he didn't texture that area.After it was painted with a coat of primer, the rest of the wall was ready for the farmhouse look of bead board wainscoting.We brought in the wainscoting and chair rail and got it all measured, cut and ready to be installed.  We placed the bead board against the wall (back side out) and and snapped another chalk line on it so it could be cut to size.Wainscoting is typically installed in chair height at 32" to 36" off the floor.  We chose the 36" height.  We ran our wainscotting from the edge of the kitchen counter all the way around under the bay window to the very small wall in the entry way.  It was a fairly small space we had to cover, so we used two full sheets of bead board paneling that we picked up at Lowe's.  We used liquid nails and the nail gun (using brads) to adhere the bead board to the wall.

TIP: Use your level to make sure you're keeping a straight line while adhering the bead board to the wall.

NOTE: If you're not into the whole "using power tools" thing, maybe try this bead board wall paper, its pre-pasted!

After all the wainscotting and chair rail was installed, we used white paintable caulk to fill in all the uneven spaces and nail holes.  I then taped off the areas I didn't want paint on and got to painting.

First we painted on the yellow to the walls.  The yellow paint is called Jekyl Clubhouse yellow (Butter).

The green color is Jekyl Crane Cottage (Sage).  We used Valspar Ultra Paint and Primer from Lowe's. This is awesome paint. Two coats and its perfect.  Lastly we painted the chair rail with a high gloss bright white trim paint.

TIP: Just in case you are rookies like we are go ahead and splurge for the really good painter's tape because when I painted the chair rail, the white leaked up on to the yellow. I'm thinking because the wall is textured, but also partly because the tape didn't really get a good hold on the wall either.

Of course we installed base boards after we tiled the floor and then the look was all complete.  I really love how our kitchen and dining room looks today.  I can't believe how much its changed since we moved in back in 2011.

What remodel job did you do first when you moved into your "new" fixer upper?

You can see how we tiled the floor by clicking right here.

More about the kitchen remodel below:

Kitchen Cabinet Makeover Part 1
Kitchen Cabinet Makeover Part 2
Kitchen Cabinet Makeover Part 3
Building a Corner Cabinet
Building a Drop in Kitchen Cabinet
Installing a Farmhouse Sink
Pantry Remodel
Old Screen Doors Get New Life
DIY Mosaic Tile Backsplash
Painting Our Cabinets

It doesn't have to be done all at once.  It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!
 

I'm Linking to:

These lovely and FUN parties!
Between Naps on the Porch
The Dedicated House  - (I was featured)