Installing Wainscoting Adds Style
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“To line with boards or paneling,” is how Mr. Webster describes wainscot. Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? Wainscot, however, can add excitement and set the theme of your home’s decor. Wainscoting, in most instances, is finished off with a variety of moldings and is a great way of creating a true, “custom millwork” look to your home.
You can actually create wainscoting by cutting wall paneling to the size of the panels you desire. This is a good, economical method of wainscoting if you simply finish off the paneling with a chair rail at the top. If you desire a more traditional wainscot design, with panels inset in stiles, you’ll need to either use solid wood or wainscot panels.
Note: For a step-by-step look at installing beab-board wainscoting, click right HERE.
Choosing
Georgia-Pacific offers precut wainscot panels 32 inches high and 48 inches wide for traditional chair-rail designs. The panels are available in a wide variety of panel styles and wood grains including; American Oak, Arcadian Oak, Honey Oak, Nordic Pine, Bedford Village, Ann Arbor Birch, Rustic Honey Oak, Rustic Unfinished Oak, Unfinished Natural Birch, Unfinished Oak, White Ice Beaded and Ready to Paint. The panels install easily and can quickly change a dull and drab room interior into a fashionable living space.
One of the “hottest” new styles these days is an old design, three-quarter walls. Plain walls can take on character with the texture and architectural interest of three-quarter wall decorative panels. For example, Bedford Village beaded decorative wall covering makes the space reminiscent of beach cottages or old-fashioned porches.
Georgia-Pacific also offers an extensive line of moldings to add just the right accent to your wainscot panels. Georgia-Pacific offers a full line of high-quality softwood, hardwood and medium-density fiberboard lengths, sculpted in various decorative styles including: crown, picture, base and base cap, chair rail, door and window trim, as well as many others. The company’s complimentary Combination Molding Designs brochure shows how molding profiles can easily be combined. The booklet offers a basic introduction to molding profiles along with projects designed at the easy, moderate and advanced levels.
New England Classic from Pacific Columns offers a complete panel system that celebrates the historical American Arts and Crafts, Mission and Shaker architectural styles with its Classic American Panel System. With 27 sizes of flat panels and corresponding stiles, the system combines with New England Classic FramePaks to create a broad range of panel heights, from traditional wainscot to full-wall heights. Stair PanelSet also allows you to continue the panel treatment up stairs. The system features either select grade-A sliced veneer or decorative film laminated to a stable engineered wood core. Veneers include oak, maple, cherry as well as a paint-grade finish that is available ready-to-finish or factory-finished.
New England Classic has a Free Design Service which helps with the daunting chore of selecting materials and creating a design. Just provide the room and/or stair measurements, and using their design service, they will output a CAD drawing complete with materials list.
Other wainscot products include the PGM Products Manor House Wainscot, primed for easy painting and easy to install, with the flexibility to create your own design and style.
One of the most unusual wainscot options is the AXYLON product line from Brooklyn Technologies, L.L.C. This indoor/outdoor wainscot combines the strength and good looks of the finest hardwoods with the durability and maintenance-free advantages of synthetic materials. AXYLON will not rot or warp and is available in white pine, oak, mahogany and walnut. It has a permanent finish that is easily cleaned with soap and water. It’s great for bathroom walls, mudrooms and laundry rooms, damp basements or garages, around porches and decks, in sunrooms and patios, family rooms and dens, cabanas and sheds.
Although wainscot is normally made of wood, a similar design can utilize wallpaper with a chair rail above.
Cutting panels for wainscoting is easy with circular saws, such as the new Crafstman LaserTrac, which features a laser that helps accurately guide the saw along the line of cut.
