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Fall One Room Challenge: Week 2 – Paint & Wall Treatment
This week I got to work my One Room Challenge transformation! I started with the obvious – paint. If you’ve been here before, this will come as no surprise to you – I used the same color I always use because it’s AMAZING!!! I used Behr Doeskin Gray, which is the same color I used for my kitchen, guestroom, and every room in my old house! I use this color so frequently because it’s the perfect greige that appears to take on a slightly different hue in each room depending on light and the color of furniture, curtains, and other decor. The white I used is Behr New House White. I’ve been using this for other rooms in my house and I really like it. It’s a nice, crisp, fresh white that really brightens up a room.
As you can see in the picture below, I didn’t paint all the way to the bottom of the wall with the Doeskin Gray because I knew I’d have to paint over it in New House White once I applied the wall panels and chair rail so this just saved me some time.
Ok, so now for the fun part! I have always loved the look of chair rails and wainscoting, but our old house had crazy texture on the walls that wouldn’t allow for this type of wall treatment. As soon as we toured the model home and picked out our floor plan for our new house I knew that I wanted to add wainscoting in the formal sitting room to give it a more custom look and feel. The issue with me doing wainscoting myself was that I had no idea how I could ever cut the corner of trim exactly how I needed to make the perfect shape and size. Plus, let’s be honest, math is hard and I just didn’t think I could make it work out. Right as I was giving up hope on my dream of having wainscoting in my house, I came across Craftmold. They seriously solved the exact problem I was having by having ready-to-apply panels in different sizes and styles! And the best part is that they have an adhesive strip on the back, so I literally just had to peel the backing off and stick them on the wall!
Ok, so back to the whole “math is hard” thing… Yes, trying to figure out how many panels I would need and of what size and how far apart to space them, this all made my head hurt. However, I can tell you that the folks that run Craftmold are absolute lifesavers and were able to work with me to obtain my room dimensions, then they mocked up some layouts so I would know how many panels in each size I would need! How’s that for customer service? Again, they literally have solved every problem I had when facing the challenge of adding wainscoting! If you’re looking to add this beautiful wall treatment to your home, I can’t recommend Craftmold panels enough!
To apply the panels, the only tools I used are a level with a ruler on it, and caulk. That’s literally it. For each of the panels, I simply peeled the backing off of the adhesive strip then applied it to the wall. Once the first one was up, I just used the ruler on my level to ensure the spacing between the first and the next one was accurate, then I used the level to make sure the panel I was applying was straight before I fully adhered it to the wall. Once I had all the panels up, I took my caulking gun and caulked the small space between the panel and the wall on both the inside and outside of the panel. That’s it! That’s all there is to applying these panels!
Once I had all of the panels caulked, I applied the chair rail. I used this polystyrene chair rail moulding from Home Depot and was so happy I chose this over traditional wood chair rail. Since this was going up in a fairly high-traffic area in the house, the main entry way and hallway to the living room and kitchen, I thought the polystyrene option would be more durable and resistant to scratches and dents should something (or someone) bump into it. Plus, most of the wood chair rail options were unpainted, so the vinyl one being white to begin with saved me a lot of time.
To cut the chair rail, I used this simple, inexpensive miter box and handsaw. I’ve used this saw for so many other projects and while it takes a little longer than using an electric saw, it’s far more portable and doesn’t require to haul your materials out to the garage or down to the basement when you need to make a cut. Also, if you’re not ready to make a big investment in a miter saw or table saw, this is well worth the money! Where there may be small gaps in the corner where the chair rail connects, I was able to use my caulk to fill in the gap and create a seamless look.
Finally, the last step in this process was to paint the chair rail, wall panels, and wall below the chair rail. This is where I used Behr New House White. The wall panels will take two or three coats of paint to ensure the coverage and color is right as the material they are made out of absorbs a lot of the first coat of paint. Since I used a bright white color, I did three coats on the panels and two on the wall.
I am so happy with how this turned out and am so impressed by the quality of these Craftmold panels. I truly think this wainscoting adds value to our house as it appears as an upgraded, custom feature that’s not standardly available in other homes in our community, and knowing that I was able to do it myself makes me so proud!
Be sure to check out the One Room Challenge Blog to see all the great participants and their amazing home transformations!
