WAINSCOTING

This is the first house we've owned that had wainscoting included in the original build.  It was used around the lower half of the dining room walls, which I found to be a really nice design element. 

Fast forward almost nine years in the house and I decided to "encourage" my husband to continue the wainscoting on the main entryway wall.  

We used the measurements from the dining room as the road map for this wall.  The challenges were determining the actual interior paint color that was used (they left us some touch up paint, but the name of the color was nowhere to be found).  Do you have any idea how many colors of white there are?  Fortunately, the Sherwin Williams up the road was able to help, but only because there was an individual who worked there who knew the original name of the painters who the builder used back then.  

   

The other challenge was finding the actual chair rail moulding.  We never did find the one they used, but what we found was a close enough match.  Both the chair rail and the half inch round were really difficult to find.  The box stores didn't carry it.  We had to have it ordered through a lumber yard.  We never did get an understanding of why you couldn't find these items in stock.  We waited almost six weeks for it to arrive.

My husband was able to finish this in just a couple days, once we had all the supplies in hand.   The dining room has the smooth panels on the lower half with the half inch round on top of it.  We chose to bypass that step and just used the white paint over the existing texture.  Had we wanted to continue with additional wainscoting in the dining room, I definitely would have used the panels, but for the entryway hall, I was perfectly fine with the matching paint.  

I love it!  This has been a really dark area of the house, so the white accents have definitely brightened it up.  The total cost of the project was under $100.....it should have been way under that.  I was shocked what the Sherwin Williams store charged me for a quart of paint (but I felt kind of obligated to purchase the paint there given the help they provided me).  

I moved a painting from the living room and placed it on this wall....not sure, I'm sold on it.  But it works for the time being.