The family that owned our home previously preferred a country theme in
the home, and in the six years we have lived here, our dining room had
reflected their tastes. Our dining set was a country blue with pine top
and seat bottoms, and the color of the room was a country blue below the
chair rail and a tan on top, with a border of horses and weathervanes.
Though we preferred a more formal dining room, I kept putting off the
project because it required 1) stripping the border 2) repainting the
room 3) replacing the builder's quality chandelier and 4) buying new
furniture. All good reasons to wait for another day. Well, the waiting
is over, and I repainted the room with white under the chair rail and
red on top. However, it just didn't look very finished; like something
was missing, and it was the wainscoting. You can't have a plain white
bottom and not dress it up with some molding.
Our home is a modest home, so I didn't want to overdo the molding and
look too formal like you'd find in a large executive home, and I didn't
want the effort and expense either. So I turned to the January 2006
issue of Handy magazine. Here I found an article for faux wainscoting;
basically, just building frames out of molding and leaving it at that.
It gives the illusion of real wainscoting without the effort and
expense. The whole project cost less than $200. However, you do need a
compressor and nailing gun to construct the frames. I couldn't imagine
doing this project without both.
The
three pictures to the left pretty much sum up the look of the room prior
to painting the frames. The job is a meticulous and tedious one,
requiring exacting measuring to get the frame sizes and positioning
consistent. And I always find caulking and painting to be tedious
exercises as well. In addition, whoever built the home accidentally
punched a hole in the bottom of the wall and simply covered it over with
a phone jack cover. The cover was in the way, so I removed it expecting
to remove an active phone line, while also wondering why anyone would
run a phone line into a dining room, when I then discovered the hole.
Fortunately, you can buy the adhesive squares to patch holes really
easily. You can see the drywall that yet needs to be painted in the
middle picture, second frame from the left where the white joint
compound is a different color from the white paint.
The
pictures to the left are after the frames have been painted. What a
difference some white paint makes! It really brings out the chair rail
and I think makes the room pop. My only hesitation was what to do with
the cool air return vent. Should a frame go there or not? I think
putting a frame there was the right choice, even though the vent isn't
centered. It would look worse I think without the frame.
So once the cherry furniture set comes in, we'll finally have the
dining room we've wanted for some time.
