Hello Friends! I’m so excited to be sharing with you today the first stages of our progress on the upstairs lounge otherwise known as Bedroom 3. We’ve got a lot done so far and I’m getting more and more excited by the day about seeing this room come together. Today I’m sharing how we did our DIY Wood Trim feature wall.
As I mentioned when talking about the design plans, I wanted to go with a little different look in the bedrooms compared to the first floor starting with doing darker trim and lighter walls.
Before we could start making the room pretty, we had to strip down the old wallpaper. We made the mistake of painting over the wallpaper when we first moved in, so I think we worked twice as hard to finally get the wallpaper down. We spent about four days scraping, steaming, wiping and scraping to get all the paper and remaining residue off.
While stripping wallpaper, we did find a little surprise hidden under there. Sadly not all the note was visible anymore but we were able to make out the date.
Once all the wallpaper was gone, we had to repair some spots on the plaster. Most of the issues were in the corners but there were a few places where the horsehair plaster underneath the finish coat was visible.
After a couple more days of patching and sanding we were ready to start putting this room back together.
I decided on doing an oversized (tall) wainscotting type feature on the long wall on the left when you enter the room. It feels like it could have been part of the house originally and since the ceilings are 10’2”, I went taller than normal for a more dramatic look.
The top of the trim is 6’ tall and I envision adding either lighting sconces or lining the top rail with photos and art for some texture and more dimension.
Coming up with the trim design was super easy. We did a similar version of this same look in the old dining room (part of it still remains in the now kitchen). For this room, I wanted the vertical rails to be closer together; more like board and batten.
We measured the length of the room, decided on the lumber dimensions we wanted and then did the math to figure out how many vertical rails we’d need. Our room is 15’ long from the door to the outside wall so we did 13 vertical rails.
We started by installing the new baseboard piece. The original trim must have been removed at some point and a generic 4” trim was added. We wanted the trim to match throughout the room so we installed new 1×8” baseboards along this wall.
Next it was time for the vertical rails. As mentioned, we already did our math and knew how many we’d need. We just needed to calculate how much space should be between them so we could mark them out on the baseboard. 1 x 8
Once we had our locations marked, we started installing them. B has #allthetools and for this project we used his nail gun and 15 guage, 2” finish inch nails. This made quick work of the 13 rails.
For these vertical rails, B really wanted to use something that wasn’t quite as thick as the top and bottom rail. He liked the idea of having a little dimension so for these vertical rails we went with 1 x 3 primed MDF boards that are about ½” thick.
Once all the vertical rails were installed, it was time for the top rail. We went with a 1 x 4 7/8 pine board for this one.
Once that was nailed in place, the last step was to add the top ledge. We went back and forth on this but we went with a 1 x 2. It provides just enough of a ledge over the top rail for dimension without sticking out too much that it would interfere with any furniture in the room.
The last step was to fill in all the nail holes. This is tedious but goes pretty quickly and it doesn’t take too long to dry. Once fully dry, I gave all the patches a good sanding to make sure a had a smooth finish and couldn’t see any of the holes.
Now the room is ready for paint! Be sure to stay tuned for the amazing paint transformation!
Bedroom 3 Task List:
Strip wallpaperPatch walls after wallpaper has been stripped and sand- Prime walls
- Paint trim
- Paint walls
- Lay carpet or hardwoods*
- Swap out light fixture
- Add new curtains
- Move in furniture
- Recover / slipcover leather sofa and chair
- Add pillows
- Art for walls
- Refinish armoire that we’ll use for linens
- Sand and paint radiator
- Refinish coffee table
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