Blessed Foundation: Post 23: Wainscoting

Our house had wainscoting and a built-in bookcase in the game room when we moved in. We thought this might be a cool feature, but unfortunately, the wood was really beat up.

The wood had nicks, gouges, and scratches all over the place and would have taken a tremendous amount of sanding to get it to a place where it would be worth refinishing.

The wainscoting is really a cool feature, though, and we thought that painting it white would brighten the room and highlight the extra detail in the room.

When we started working in the room, Alan framed the windows to make them look a little more finished. He used primed 1X6 boards.

Before we could start work on the wainscoting, we needed to use some Sander Deglosser to remove some of the shiny finish that still remained on the wood. We used some old rags and wiped down each section of the wood using circular motions.

After the gloss of the wood was gone, it was time to start priming. We used Kilz 2 primer and used a foam roller brush for the large, flat sections of the wainscoting and a brush for the more intricate mouldings.

We decided to use a satin finish to cover the wainscoting. We thought that semi-gloss or high gloss would be too shiny on all four walls. We went to work, painting the wainscoting the same way we had primed it. (My mom came into town and spent her vacation helping us out! She's the best!)

We painted the walls the same beige that we had used throughout the house.

Voila! Bright, clean lines!

Instead of painting the entire book case white, we decided to give the countertop a dark stain.

We also wanted to make the book case look like on solid piece of furniture. Alan built two shelf brackets to connect the top shelves to the bottom casing. He covered the back wall with beadboard and I painted the rest of the piece like we had painted the wainscoting.