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The Mission: To design and work with left over trim molding to achieve a custom wainscoting for the basement home renovation. I am going to attempt to track the hours it takes to do this. Often, we see on tv shows, in magazines and books, how to do this or how to build that. Time is never mentioned but it is important part of the building process. I consider myself an intermediate woodworker with enough skills to do most jobs, but I'm not a fast worker, I like to take my time.
The Total Cost so far, $750 materials:
17 sheets of 3/4 x 12 x 96 inch MDF 240 ft of baseboard molding 240 ft of 1/4 round finger joint pine 1 liter glue, assorted brad nails
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 | The Process: Its taken us a couple of years to start the process of finishing the basement. We recently finished the drywall, plaster and paint stage. Now its to tackle the wainscot for the walls. In other rooms in the basement (bathroom and laundry) we used beadboard panels with a chair rail top trim and common style baseboard molding. We now wanted a more traditional style wainscot in the living room and basement entrance. |
| The way I approach a project I need to plan it out in my head first. Not all details, but I like to step through the building process to see what obstacles will be met along the way. In designing this wainscot, I knew the MDF was going to be 3/4 inch thick and the chair rail on top was another 5/8 inch. Using stock molding flat against the door or window trim was not going to look good at all. The MDF was thicker than the stock trim and our personal taste is we do not like wainscot and chairs sticking out further than the door/window trim. So I decided to build out the stock trim.Time: 2 hrs. |
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| A couple trips to the Central Home Improvement building center, mulling over what was in stock or what could be ordered. We even had the opportunity to speak with trim reps who just so happened to be in the store. I wasn't impressed by what they were offering since it was the same as what I was currently looking at. The only solution was to use stock trim for the doors and windows and build them out past the chair rails molding. Here was a test mock up of what we decided to do. Time: 3 hrs. |
| I actually decided to do the room on the other side of this door first. That room will not have wainscot installed but I still had to build out the trim on the door because the baseboard molding and quarter round trim extended past the stock door trim. |
| I ripped some MDF that measured 9/16 inches wide, 2 pieces of MDF behind each piece of door trim so I had to rip 4 pieces. Glue and lots of nails! Good thing for nail hole filler. I typically use a 3/16 step back with installed door trim and I had it all measured out ready to nail but I noticed the door, when it closed, the latch would strike the molding. I know for fact that over time this would produce an ugly black mark on the trim from the door latch constantly hitting it, so I had to set it back 3/8 inch. That's double what I typically do..but what else was there to do? I certainly could not (would not) cut a notch in the trim so the latch would not hit, and leaving it would eventually produce black marks. So this is after the correction, there's just enough room for the latch to pass by. Time: 3 hrs. |
| So you can see that these are some of the unexpected issues that can come up. Now I have to rethink how to nail the built up molding onto the door casing. Instead of straight in nailing I'll have to angle the nailer since there's not enough door casing behind the built up trim to shoot straight in. Angling the nailer brings up visions of brad nails going off course and blowing out the side of the door casing. Been there and done that. Not fun. Now to carefully choose the right length nails. In the end, they installed just fine, good and solid. I did put the random orbit sander to use and sanded down both sides of the build out trim, so that when it gets painted it will be hard to notice it was built out trim. See (A) below). Now with them installed, I measured for the lengths of trim needed to build the cap. |
| Three pieces of MDF: the bottom piece coved on both sides, the middle piece is flat stock with a mitered return on both ends and the top piece is profiled with a bit of detail. Honestly, I only have two profile router bits in my "arsenal of tools" and I didn't like the other one. Simple choice really. :) |
| Three pieces of MDF: the bottom piece coved on both sides, the middle piece is flat stock with a mitered return on both ends and the top piece is profiled with a bit of detail. Honestly, I only have two profile router bits in my "arsenal of tools" and I didn't like the other one. Simple choice really. :) Some details should be pointed out at this time. Be prepared to invest a fair bit of time measuring the pieces. By that I mean the thickness of the stock pieces, the radius of the routered cove, see (B) below, how far to step back the flat stock, see (C) below and how far to offset the top plate, see (D) below. I decided to align the flat stock with the built out door trim installed earlier and had the bottom and top pieces stick out a bit further. It should look great once painted. |
| I started on the outside of the door. I'm having trouble with my 18 gauge nailer, nails are 2-1/2 so they just are enough to bit the wood, but accuracy is the problem. I was trying to nail in place a built out door trim and used "5" nails and still missed. Then on the 6th, I had a blow out. Didn't swear, but I put down the nailer and went to the work shop to get some 3" finish nails. I only had a few so I figured I'd pre-drill and nail in place. Drilled the hole and broke off the drill bit inside. Didn't swear, honest! I just put the drill down and picked up a scrap piece of trim and starting to write down my shopping list. |
| Today I got busy installing door trim over that storage room door and the garden door. I cut out the pieces and glued and nailed in these two headers. It took a couple trips back and forth to the workshop since the table saw and router table are there, the miter saw in set up in the basement. Time: 1:30 hrs. |
| June 4, 2010 - For 2 hrs this evening I cut out the upper.and lower strips for this room, and installed them. A few trips back and forth to the workshop to rip the strips. The some measuring, and more measuring and cutting. Then finding the studs, marking them and using the 18 gauge brad nailer with 2-1/2 inch nails to secure the 3/4 MDF through the 1/2 inch drywall and into the studs. For the most part it went smoothly. One thing to keep in mind that if you have someone load your MDF sheets for you, make sure you tell them to ensure all of the MDF you are getting is the same thickness. I started off with an 8ft strip on that long wall and needed another 24 inches. I cruised along, measuring, cutting and installing the 8ft piece. Measured and cut the remaining length from another sheet and what do you know....its about 1/16 thinner. So its either throw that out and find a board of proper thickness or make do and touch up with a random orbit sander. Well the joints will have to be hit with the ROS anyway so a little more elbow grease will flatten the joint. With maybe a little help from a belt sander. :) |
| Now we have to stand back and decide what width to use for the panels. Those blocks in place on the lower strip represent where the vertical pieces will go, they are 4 inches wide. In the picture above they are separated by approximately 26 inches. The vertical space is 22-1/4 inches so its almost square. The problem I forsee is the inside trim molding comes in 8ft lengths and using a 26x22-1/4 measurement leaves a lot of wasteage unless I miter mid-way and sand the joint so that it all gets used up. The problem with that in the future it will be a guaranteed issue of fixing/filling joints that come apart as the humidity changes. Another spacing we are also considering is something more narrow as shown on the picture below, set at 16 inches wide with a 22-1/2 height, I can easily get the 4 pieces of trim needed to wrapped the inside of the panel with minimum wastage. And, when you add the 16 inch length with the 4 inch wide vertical pice, that equals 20 inches. It just so happens that the majority of the walls that will get this wainscot are all a factor of 20. It should be a simple decision. |
| Something that is not so simple..actually its downright scary...is the ability for a 2-1/2 inch long 18 gauge brad nail to blow out from a 3/4 inch piece of MDF.!! Always wear eye protection! I'm just lucky that this nail decided to grab just enough MDF to stay in place. At the curved path it was on, it would have headed right for my face. |
| I repositioned the nailer and took the picture below to give you an idea of the position the gun was in. It was a straight in shot. I could see that if the nailer was on a 45 degree angle or something similar that an accident like this could occur. This one surprised me for sure and it also left a big hole after the nail was pulled out. |
| June 06, 2010 - Onward we go...I finished off the MDF strips and sanded the joints flush then got a start on the molding detail inside the panels. When it came time to install the trim, the issue of the MDF not all being the same thickness really came to the forefront. When I did the two panels in the corner to the right of the door, I pushed the trim in all the way and it provided a 1/16 inch reveal on the edge of the MDF. However when I started trimming the panels to the left of the door, the trim edged past the MDF to reveal itself about 1/16 inch. So that means the MDF to the left of the door is 1/8 inch thinner that the MDF that was used to the right of the door. So now its to think about what to do...do I nibble away the back end of the wood trim so that there is a 1/16" to match what I started out doing? Or, do I pull out the trim to the right of the door and make it flush with the MDF and install the trim in the panels on the left side of the door as is, sticking out 1/16" and then hit them with the orbit sander after the glue dries? It came down to which would take more trips to the garage. So we decided to install and hit with the sander when the trim is all installed. I took my time getting a good fit because I did not want to use the nailer if at all possible. The wall was a bit wonky on the panel to the left of the door to I needed to force the trim to bend a bit, nails required. A few extra nail holes in the grand scheme of things should not be too noticeable. :) Time sure does fly. 3.5 hrs |
| June 12, 2010 - Too busy through the week to get at it in the evenings. Spent much of Saturday (6 hrs) working on the wainscoting by finishing up the wood trim inside the panels. Nailed in the store bought chair rail (white) and made my own cap to top off the wainscot (made from pine). The entrance room is now fully done and being prepped for painting (filling nail holes). Its now time to tackle the main living space in the basement. Below is the wainscoting I installed in the laundry room. I used store bought beadboard and 2 pieces of store bought chair rail and quarter round. So this is what I also want to do for chair rail in the other rooms. |
| Here is how I wrapped a corner with two doorways. The cap on the chair rail still needs to be installed. |
| Here I continue to wrap around that doorway and the remaining pictures show the other walls in the room. |
| Here is a close up picture of the store bought quarter round. As you can see it doesn't fit. It was fine for the bead board panels that were 3/8 inch thick but this MDF is 3/4 inch thick so I need to make a similar profile molding but make it 3/8 inch wider. |
| Below you can see a sample trim I made up to test fit. A pretty good fit so now its off to the workshop to make a lot more of it. |
| I had previously purchased two 3/4 inch thick pine boards about 6 ft long and got to work ripping them to width and then bringing them to the router table to be profiled. |
| Below you will see that the next step in the process is to make the final rip on the tablesaw to get the proper thickness of the molding. |
| The end result of all this work is shown below. A fairly simple process that took no more than 30 minutes to do. |
| June 15, 2010 - Our project is now full stop. Apparently there is no way to purchase more 3/4 x 12 x 96 inch MDF sheets. This is not a good situation to be in. The supplier (Central) calls the MDF I purchased '11/16' but it measures a true 3/4 inch thick. There is some confusion as to the material they sell in their warehouse. A customer can be charged for the item as it appears on the receipt, 12" x 8' x MDF SHELVING 3/4" (MDFA128) but what is out in the warehouse can be three different size thicknesses, ranging from 13/16, 3/4 and 5/8. In my initial order the worker loaded up about 20 sheets which was mostly 3/4 inch but there were 4 sheets of 13/16 inch. It was only after I cut a 13/16 that I realized it was too thick for the wainscot I was installing. It took a significant amount of effort of sanding to get to to come level. From that experience I put aside the 13/16 and worked with just the 3/4 inch thick material. |
| Something else I discovered which you should keep in mind is that sometimes the MDF sheets come wider than 12 inches and sometimes it comes longer than 96 inches. Being longer was not an issue for me but the random widths was an issue and here is why. I need a 5-3/4 inch wide piece because the chair rail molding I am using is 1-3/4 inch wide and I want a 4 inch wide board to show for all the wainscot panels. 4 inch wide below the chair rail, 4 inch wide above the baseboard (after the baseboard is installed) and 4 inch wide vertical sections that separate the panels.When I cut a few initial boards that were "12x96", I need to get 5-3/4 inch for the top horizontal piece of wainscoting and the remaining board will be used for the bottom horizontal piece. That went ok. When it came time to cut some more I scaled the tablesaw to cut off the bottom piece assuming the remaining was 5-3/4 inch. Not so! Apparently the first lot of boards I cut were wider than 12 inches so when I cut the second lot...on 12 inch wide boards...I ended up with my top pieces being 5-5/8 inch. You might say its only 1/8 difference but think of it this way...I am midway through installing the top pieces on a wall. Yes, I could drop the material to meet what is currently on the wall but that leaves the very top (behind the chair rail) 1/8 inch lower and when it comes time to put on that top cap I will have to shim it 1/8 inch. A real pain. Lesson learned, I should of measured and cut the 5-3/4 boards first, or at the very least, measured the width of all these MDF sheets as I handled them. |
| So the store tells me that the earthquake in Chile a while back has knocked out the supply chain for MDF. Chile...I never would of guessed that. I've been told that the way in which the store is supplied the material, its random at best. They may order one item but get random thicknesses. Not the best service they are getting from their dealer. However the store should not put 5/8 or 13/16 thick MDF in a warehouse slot for 3/4 inch thick MDF and try to sell it as such. Just because most of this material is sold to consumers for general shelving projects doesn't excuse the fact that at some point, what a customer expects and pays for and what a customer receives, will impact the opinion of the customer service received by the store. |
| Ok, I'll get off the soapbox now...back to work. |
| June 16 - I had said previously that working with MDF is dirty business and its nasty stuff. I rigged up a high velocity fan and opened a window in a nearby room to provide air flow. |
| June 16 - Spent 2-1/2 hrs cutting and nailing in some more top and bottom wainscot trim. Most of the time was spent figuring out how to cut and profile the bottom plate of the window trim box. |
| June 17 - Spent 2-1/2 hrs cutting and nailing in some more top and bottom wainscot trim and lining up where the vertical pieces will go. Most of the time was spent up in the workshop cutting out the other three bottom plates of the window boxes. You've only seen three windows so far but there is another window in an adjacent room that will receive similar trim work (but no wainscot). |
| The stairway is behind this wall and you can see that the basement cold air return is an obstacle to trim around. I suppose there are a number of ways to deal with this; recess the grate, put a wide trim around the grate, or as I did, made it a flush fit. |
| June 18-19: Well I spent a total of about 10 hours of cutting, glueing, nailing, installing and making a mess. The work is slowly starting to change the feel of the room. Weird how that works...or maybe its just me. :) |
| June 23: About 10 hours installing the window trim, applying two coats of filler, drying overnight between coats. |
| July 01: About 3 hours finish sanding, caulking joints around window trim, more sanding and painting. |
| July 02: About 2 hours of more sanding and painting. We have finished the entrance room. |
| July 03: About 6.5 hours of cutting and installing the pine trim moldings for inside the wainscot boxes...all 32 boxes!. |
| July 04: 2 hours of filling nail holes and seams. Ran out of molding and caulking, so another trip to the hardware store..There's about 15 ft left to install.. |
| July 05: 3 hours of installing trim and filling holes and sanding. |
| July 06: 4 hours of sanding and re-filling holes. |
| July 07: 3 hours of sanding and painting primer. |
| July 08: 1 hour final filling gaps with caulking and 4.5 hours.painting. |
| July 09: 4 hours.painting wainscoting (2nd coat). |
| July 10: 2 hours.painting a couple of doors and touchups to a couple of outlets where the plaster guys did not go close enough to cover gaps. I discovered when I was putting on electrical plates that there were gaps in the walls, plaster was missing. So they had to be filled and of course, it has to dry overnight, and sand and paint a couple of coats. Another coat of paint on the doors and then we can start the floor.s |
| July 15: 3.5 hours to finish applying the last of the paint and to fix touch ups. So it took about 85 hours to complete the wainscoting, that's two solid weeks if a person were at it 8 hrs a day. We are now moving on to flooring...with the same sort of work schedule. Try and get at it each night for at least an hour or so. There are still door casings and trim to install and doors to be hung, then there's all the baseboard and two coats of paint on top of that. We're over the hump for sure but still a ways to go. |
| August 04: FINALLY.... ALL DONE!!!! |
| Ground Level Guest Bedroom |
| Yes, we even installed carpet on stairs |
| And the laundry room too...this room will get storage in the future. For now, the walls, floor and ceiling are done. And the line is up for winter clothes drying. We bought a dryer but don't use it. |
| Even the under stairs got some attention... |
| That's all ! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at woodworkingplans@geemail.com (REMOVE the "double e" in the email address to send me an email, I misspelled it on purpose to lessen the amount of spammers). |
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