Paneling in the dining room

Now that Kristen has picked out the color for the dining room I have started working on putting in the paneled wainscoting. We are trying to get all of this done in the dining room before Thanksgiving so that when Marianne and Stuart are here we should be able to eat at the table without all the clutter. Only one of the panels is finished at this point but the other should be coming along this week.

The panels themselves are not true panels because the flat back portion of the panel is the actual wall. Here is the sequence of how these ones went in:

The wall is textured under the paint so the first thing to do is skim coat the surface with joint compound to smooth it out. This seems like it would be a big hassle but it was rather easy to get
the wall flat again.

The chair rail is put on the wall and coped to meet the molding around the door frame.


The existing baseboard is removed and reinstalled shimmed out 0.25 inches. This is done because the rails of the panels are 0.25 inches thick and the baseboard cap has to go right over it.

The rails and stiles are added between the baseboard and the chair rail.

Inside the rails and stiles a trim piece is added. The joint compound bucket is holding a paint stick that is applying pressure to the trim piece while it drys.

The location of the electrical outlet on the panel was going to be an issue so a hole was cut in the center of the panel. I hit a stud and a water pipe so that was not going to work out. The final solution was to move the outlet to be baseboard.