Wife wants to remodel our 13×13 dining room with wainscoting up to chair rail height. The walls are frame with drywall. I was thinking about using 1/2 ” MDF for the rails, stiles, and raised panels and using mitered quarter round to frame around the panels, rather than go the route of milling the edge detail on all rails and stiles. The plan is to paint it white. There is a manufacturer out there that makes a kit to accomplish the same thing, but I cannot find him. Google failed me for the first time. Any suggestions?
George
Replies
George,
A good hardwood / furniture grade plywood supplier will have pre-made wainscoting in sheets. The proper adhesive (e.g. Liquid Nails), and a few strategically placed brads, and you can have the room done in an afternoon. Trim the new panels with your favorite milled stock trim, paint everything, and voila - a brand new room.
Please feel free to send along any questions that you may have.
Dan Kornfeld, Owner/President - Odyssey Wood Design, Inc.
I just finished my dining room and stairway using pre-manufactured panels from New England Classics.I think thats the company you are looking for but my dealings with them were less than pleasant.It took about a year to get the material as ordered on the original invoice.Between the local distributor and NEC it was totally screwed up.Would I reccomend them? Definately not!
Lincrusta if you have deep pockets. Lineoleum based wainscoating is beautiful but over the top financially. If it is going to be painted then consider that thru the paneling from the box store with a frame.
If you are going to fab it yourself then check out the new Fine Homebuilding issue. They feature MDF construction on the wainscoating as well as frame and panel in the latest issue. Just read some of it this morning. There might be a synopsis on the "hot-button" above.
My only suggestion is to do it quick (like in one day) so she doesn't have time to change her mind.
We're redoing our kitchen (walls only), and settled on (from ceiling to floor) paint, border, wallpaper, chair rail, paint, baseboard. A week ago we painted the ceiling. Saturday we bought the chair rail. Sunday we started the wallpaper. Yesterday (Monday) I came home and it seems "we" have decided not to do chair rail after all, but rather a paintable textured paper border (cut in half, no less) at chair rail height to simplify installation. So there goes $50 of lovely finger-joint pine chair rail right out the window... but no! "We" have also decided that the chair rail bought for the kitchen will do nicely for the new wainscoting project in the dining room - only it'll be stained instead of painted, etc. etc. So now the dining room is next... the funny note here is that it took two weeks to choose the wallpaper for the kitchen - every time I got home from work there was a new sample stuck to the wall; "what do you think?" "I like it. I liked the one yesterday too. I'll like whatever you pick, just make up your blinkin' mind, darn it!"
*whew* Sorry to rant. Just the joys of decorating with Mom. The point is, get a decision and act on it within 6-8 hours, or it will be changed. Trust me.
It must have been 6 months ago, or maybe even longer.......
And I can't even remember if it was here in Knots or if it was over in Breaktime.
But someone had posted a picture of a wainscotting job that they had done, and it was nothing short of awesome. I don't know if they had used the Cape Cod panels from the home centers, or if they had molded everything themselves.
But the finished product was absolutely stunning to look at.
See the attached picture -- I only wish I could claim it was my work! Sorry about the .BMP format, and the huge file size. My image editing software is not recognizing this as something that can be converted for some reason......
I found a local New England Classics dealer who allowed me to take some dimensions from the store display. New England Classics has the dimensions on their web site if you poke around long enough. I fabricated raised panels, stiles, rails, shoe moldinds, and chair rails all from MDF. The raised panels were standardized using three different widths. After everything was milled, the milled edges were sanded by hand, then a white prime coat was appied with a roller. The installation was accomplished with a Paslode Nail Gun. The bottom rail was intially nailed in place one inch up from the bottom to allow for the panels to be slid into place. Stud locations were spotted with small pieces of paper tape both on the floor and above the chair rail. As the assembly progressed, the final nails were driven.
After that installation, I was recruited to do three more dining rooms..
ab,
What, you don't watch New Yankee Wkshop? That's how FWW's done nowadays.
"Now, I'll just add a few staples here, for strength." THWOCK!THWOCK!THWOCK!THWOCK!!
Ray, ducking
I have only done this a couple of times once with raised oak panels, and once with poplar moldings and some plywood for rails and stiles for a paint grade project. Both times I removed the drywall just below the top of the top rail and replaced with 1/2" ply for backing. this also allowd me easy access to re route electrical wires and boxes to land in the centres as req'd to look just right. Just my 2cents.
joiners work and old dusty, You boys are bad!, you forgot them little metal disks and them funny skrews, they use on them high end entertainmant centers from that new top end store I--A. Now that’s fine would werkin!!. garyowen (PS, I know my sense of humor is WHARPED)
Upon closer inspection-- This message was posted in 2003. If the wainscoting isn't done by now-- experience tells me his wife would have left this fine gentleman.
bduff,
Actually, corrugated fasteners are called "wigglenails" around here in VA.
A clamp nail, as I know it, is another bit of hardware entirely. Used to use clamp nails in one shop I worked at years ago. They are an elongated "H" in section, not corrugated, the ends of the H are slightly flared and sharpened at one end. Extruded steel, not sheet metal. In use they are driven with the crossbar of the H fitting into a special extra-narrow saw kerf. The kerf is on each of the two pieces to be joined. Think of a (lengthwise) splined miter joint, the clamp nail acting as the spline and exerting clamping force at the same time. The shop used them to assemble bracket feet. Like wigglenails, they are not period correct, but unlike wigglenails, they actually work.
Ray
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