Easy Ways to Update A Builder Grade Kitchen – Paint & Wall Treatment
Hi friends! I’ve you’ve been following along with me for a while, you know that earlier this year we moved into our new home. After being in the house only a couple of weeks, I of course started to go crazy with all the white walls and lack of decor, so I eagerly got to work on my first room, the guest room/my office for the Spring One Room Challenge.
Now that the dust has settled from that project and my bank account has recovered, I decided it was time to tackle the kitchen! Since the kitchen is truly the heart of our home, it is so important to me that it feel welcoming while also maintaining the function that we need.
Over the next 6 weeks, I’m going to share with you how I updated our builder grade kitchen to give us a more custom, inviting space! Before we dive in though, let me show you a couple pictures of the before.
The Before
The picture above was from my walk-through a few days before the house officially became ours. As you can see, it’s super stark-white and drab, but has so much potential!
Above you can see the awesome barstools I got from Wayfair.com, and of course, my amazing temporary kitchen table – a 6ft folding table from Walmart! 😛 Let me tell you, finding a table that fit the space the way I wanted was no easy task. I didn’t want to spend a fortune on a table and I had a certain look in mind, but I couldn’t find one that fit my budget that was the length and width I wanted so as to not block the walking path through the kitchen. So, for about 2 months, we lived with this folding table and chairs until I decided to just make my own table!
Paint & Wall Treatment
I knew pretty early on that I wanted to do some wainscoting on this wall to add some dimension to the room. So to start, I painted just the top few feet of the wall in my all time favorite color, Behr Doeskin Grey. I can’t tell you enough how amazing this color is. It coordinates well with browns or blacks as it can read as taupe or grey depending on the lighting and the hues around it.
Also, before I officially started the wainscoting I got so excited to put something on the walls, that I couldn’t wait! What you see above are framed recipes that were handwritten by my Grandma! I’ve wanted to do something with them for a long time, but never knew what. So when I knew I had a small space to fill on the wall above the wainscoting, I just knew this would be perfect!
For the actual wainscoting, you’ll need a 3/4″ sheet of MDF. You can get them from Home Depot for under $20. While at the store, have them rip down your 4′ x 8′ sheet of MDF into 4″ long strips so you’ll end up with basically long pieces of “wood” that is 4″ x 8′. If you’ve never worked with MDF before, don’t be intimidated. It’s WAAAAAY easier to work with than pieces of wood because there’s basically no bowing, no knots, and no splinters. MDF stands for Medium-Density Fiberboard and is basically compressed sawdust. For real – best kind of product to work with for DIY wainscoting.
To start your project, you’ll want to determine how high you want the top of your wainscoting. I went for 5′ above the existing baseboard. Before you just start slapping it up to the wall, you’ll want to mark a line across the wall for reference that is level to ensure you don’t have a slant to your wall.
Once you have your reference point on the wall, line the end of one strip of MDF up to the edge of the wall, and use a nail gun to keep in place. You’ll want to put a nail in the board every 4-6 inches to ensure the back of the board remains flush with the wall. I will say that you can also use liquid nails as extra reinforcement to ensure your boards stay in place, but I personally would only worry about that in high-traffic areas where people may touch the boards and over time cause the nail holes to weaken. I however chose not to use my liquid nails as I’m pretty confident that my boards will stay in place with no issues.
Once you have your top row finished, you may begin on your second row. To make my life a little easier on this one, I simply took a piece of wood that I had cut to 12 inches and used that as a spacer while I put up my second board. So essentially, I held the wood to the bottom of the top board so I could ensure the top of my second board was lined up exactly 12 inches below the other. I did this for the entire length of the wall to ensure it was equally spaced throughout.
For the bottom piece, I simply rested the board on the top of my baseboard and nailed in place. Some people decide to remove their baseboard and put their MDF in place of it, but I personally don’t think that’s necessary. Because the wainscoting will be white, just like the baseboard, it visually isn’t distracting or look out of place to essentially have a wider baseboard. Plus, if you have a table, furniture, curtains, etc… in front of your wainscoting, no one will hardly notice anyway.
After I finished my horizontal boards, I got started on my vertical boards. I cut 9 12″ boards to create 8 squares for the top portion of my wainscoting. Each board was spaced approximately 16″ apart, but please keep in mind that if you do this for your own home, you’ll have to determine what the appropriate spacing is for you to ensure you don’t have some squares bigger or smaller than the others at the end of the wall. And let me tell you, the old saying “measure twice, cut once” could not be more applicable here. I think I’d actually change it to “measure a hundred times then nail your board in place” because math is hard – that’s all I’m going to say about that. 😛
You can also see in this picture that I added a strip of 1″ x 2″ wood to the top of the wainscoting for added detail.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what kind of saw you need to do all of this, here it is! Literally nothing fancy or expensive at all – just a simple miter box and handsaw. Yes, I do own other fancy more expensive saws, but I wanted to show you that it is possible to make something beautiful with something so simple. Oh, and sawing MDF is really quick because it’s already basically sawdust! 🙂
The last portion of board to go up were the vertical boards for the bottom section of the wainscoting. These were about 3′ in length and because I already had the top vertical pieces nailed down, I simply used a level to make sure I was putting this up straight and in line with the ones above them.
Finally, the last step is to paint! I went with Behr New House White which is a nice, clean, bright white. I would recommend using a primer prior to applying the paint unless you want to apply tons of layers of paint since the MDF is fairly dark.
Notice how terribly off center that light is? That’s one of the things on my list to do… I’m currently working on getting estimates from electricians to move my light centered over the table and install a better one. I’m hoping I can get it done in the next few weeks.
So there you have it! A super easy way to update a builder grade kitchen and make it feel and look more custom! And the major bonus is that this is a super affordable project that can be done in a day!
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