picture frame wainscoting

Hello! I am excited to be a guest here today with you sharing some how-to tips. I am Casey, creator of Yes to Lovely, a little blog that is my creative outlet in addition to being a wife and momma. After several life upheavals and some loss in our lives, I decided I wanted to focus on whatever lovely thoughts, moments or surroundings I could in order to not let life get me down. Hence, I daily choose to say, “yes!” to lovely and I compile lovely ideas and photos on my blog.

My husband and I recently took out a half wall in our tiny galley-style kitchen, and the project I am going to share with you today is using picture frame wainscoting to make the half wall and lower cabinets appear like an island. I am excited with the low cost and the results!

Our galley kitchen was claustrophobic. With two toddlers, the space was getting nutty with four of us in there at a time. We knocked out part of a full wall and half a wall. This left us with a half wall in order to plug in our stove. We opted to turn the area into an island, and it is still a work in progress with hopes of removing the carpet for tile, adding stools and getting a new stove.

But in the meantime, in place of traditional wainscoting, to fool us all into thinking it looked like a real island cabinet, we mounted a board, stained it and to keep costs down, I applied plain white frames (available at any major home improvement store, I got mine at Lowe’s). This was an easier project than I was expecting it to be. I was a little intimidated because measuring isn’t really my strong suit. I sew, cook and do paint projects often with little measuring and (usually) it all turns out. That’s just the way I think – but using the level and really measuring was quite fun, actually!

To start I made sure to purchase enough frames to fill the space in a design I liked. So I bought four of the large frames, measured to make sure they would be equally spaced and then taped them to the wall using painter’s tape to keep them where I wanted. The measuring was a bit tricky because we have an old house, and the floor is a wee bit sloped. So make sure you use a level but sometimes, a bit of eyeballing is necessary to make sure it lines up with baseboard or chair rails.

After taping the frames, I outlined each of the four corners with a pencil and took them off the wall. Originally, I tried using liquid nails to adhere them to the island, but you have to be an octopus to do this. It takes a while to stick and the frames like to pop off. So when the glue was not happening, I switched to finishing nails. Just pounded them in down the sides and on each corner. This step took only a few minutes. It does help to have a second set of hands, but re-taping the frame also works.

Finally, I took some latex filler and covered the nail heads, primed and painted our makeshift island in a rich taupe hue, a contrasting color from our other cabinets.

This project can save you quite a lot of time, money and trouble if you want to use it in place of traditional frame wainscoting. I love how it turned out, if I do say so myself! Super satisfying project.

It has been awesome sharing this today! Thanks for reading and I hope you can transfer this project to your own home’s needs as well!

Casey

Wow Casey! That is an awesome repurpose! I truly love how your “wainscoting” turned out! I know my friends are going to LOVE this project! Thanks for sharing it with us today. Be sure to hop over and say hi to Casey @ Yes to lovely

gail