Breakfast Nook Redo - Before & During

Everyone loves a good before and after, but today I am here to show you a pretty good before and during!  Here is how our breakfast nook looked on Monday:

(Isn't it crazy how using a flash or no flash completely changes the look of my wall color!?)


After about 6 hours of work spread over two days, our breakfast nook looks like this:

Here's a breakdown of the process that got us this far:

Score all trim before removing the baseboards.

Gently remove all baseboards.  To save money, you will reinstall these at the end.  (Key word gently - that's why you see ME doing this step!)

This is the product we chose.  It is actually a kit that you are supposed to buy with an interlocking baseboard and chair rail.  However, the baseboard that came with the kit was much smaller than our current baseboard, and everyone wants the chunkiest baseboards as possible, right?!  Also, our living room, dining room and hallway is already upgraded with a chair rail, and the chair rail in the kit was not a matching design.  In the end, we just bought these already primed, composite wainscoting panels, used our old baseboards and installed matching chair rail molding.

Here are how the wainscoting panels work:

Interlocking panel make instillation a cinch.

After putting a few panels together, we located a stud.  This was super easy.  We new that one of the electrical outlets was secured to a stud, so I just measured up the wall and marked above the panels every 16 inches.  The mark won't matter since the chair rail will cover it up.

(These pictures might look staged, but I swear they are action shots....can't you tell?!)


After installing all panels, we reattached the baseboards.

(I know the "we" looks a lot like Rusty, but I did remove all baseboards and run the nail gun.  Someone has to document our work!)

Next, we measured, cut and installed the chair molding.

Here's what's left to finish the project:

1. Caulk all trim and seams
2. Paint trim, wainscoting and chair rail a high gloss white

I'm not even sure I have any readers left considering I showed the "During" picture at the beginning of the post, but if I do, here is my list of what to do to finish the kitchen/breakfast area completely:

1. Paint the kitchen either a creamy off white or a white grey
2. Purchase (and possibly paint) a 42" or 48" round table and four chairs off of Craigslist (I check every day and have about 10 e-mail negotiations going.  My budget is $100-$150 dollars depending on the size and current color)
3. Find a drum shade light fixture to hang over the table

The total cost in materials for installing the wainscoting is around $125.00 since we were able to salvage our current baseboards and my labor only charged me for lunch both days!  We love the results and feel it adds so much to the space that it lacked before.

If you had $125.00 and a few hours to complete a project around home, what would you tackle?