Faux Wainscoting anyone?

Well, this week, we've been working on our kitchen. I've been wanting to do a few things to make our kitchen look nicer. One of them is the faux wainscoting. This seems to be the new big thing to do out in blogland and I really like it. One of the blogs I follow did it in her kitchen and that gave me the idea to do it in ours. Here is the link that I based this project of off.

Here are some before pictures, that I took last summer when I painted the kitchen.

I loved the paint job at the time and still do, but the bottom part has always seemed kind of bare, like something was missing.

So, let's introduce a little bit of faux wainscoting, shall we?

It's basically just painting the bottom half of the wall white, adding molding in the middle and then putting up square molding.

I love it! I love how it just instantly makes the dining area look more classy, more put together, etc.

If you looked at the link, where I got the idea from, she explains how to space the squares and stuff. We bought the trim at Lowes. Dan's parents were very kind to us and gave us a Lowes gift card for both of our birthdays. So we really didn't have to pay for this project, which is always nice. :) I did something I've never done before and bought the paint at Wal-Mart. I got the cheapo walmart brand. The paint in the kitchen is flat and a gallon of flat paint is $7.77 at walmart, as compared to $15 at Lowes. I decided to try it out and it wasn't bad at all. They color matched the white, to the white that is on our floorboards, so it would be similar in shade. I also got another gallon of red paint and painted another wall red, that I'll show you later. I did notice that the red paint seemed kind of runny. I don't know if it was because it was cheaper paint, or because they had to put more tint in it to make it red. I didn't really notice this with the white paint.

I started off by measuring where I wanted the middle piece of trim to go and taping it. Then I painted the wall white. Dan cut the trim for me. The thicker trim came primed, but the trim for the squares wasn't, so he primed them with spray paint, then I painted them. And it wasn't very fun. Probably because I'm pregnant and had to sit on the tile floor and paint them and I did it later in the evening and was tired. There were also small crevices that on the trim, so I had to make sure the paint got in there. Also, I wore a mask when I painted, in case anyone is thinking I'm crazy for exposing my unborn child to paint fumes. :)

Here is all that trim that I painted.

Then we put up the middle line of trim. I'm very grateful for Dan's help and know how when it comes to cutting and measuring the trim. We then measured how far apart the squares would go and Dan got his nail gun out and we put up the squares. That took a while and little Anna was up and wanting to be part of the action. At one point, we were both kneeling down in front of a square, trying to level a piece of trim. Dan had the nail gun in his hand, I was trying to hold a piece of trim on the wall in place and she comes up, puts her arms on our shoulders and starts swinging herself! It was so cute, but annoying and just one of those moments where you have to laugh about the whole thing.

So, after all the trim was up, I filled in the nail holes with putty. Another annoying and not fun project, but it had to be done. I then sanded the covered nail holes and painted over them and then it was DONE! Overall, this wasn't a terribly difficult project. It probably cost about $70 or so. All we bought for it was trim, paint and some new outlet covers which are 44 cents each. This price will obviously vary depending on the size of wall you're doing.

I love it and am so glad we did it!