 | Medium: $1,750-$5,500 per room |
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| Typically covering the bottom half of an interior wall, wainscot can give a room a sense of timeless elegance or a cozy cottage feel. It's often used to make a dining room appear more formal or to brighten a bathroom or a child's bedroom, but it can be installed almost anywhere. | | |
| Typical costs: | - Easy-to-install prefabricated wainscoting is medium-density fiberboard covered with a veneer, ready for painting or staining.
- Materials average $7 a square foot for paint-grade poplar veneer, $11-square-foot for red oak, $18 for maple, and $22-square-foot for cherry, according to ThisOldHouse.com.
- For 45 square feet in a bathroom, the cost ranges from $300-$900; or $1,750-$5,500 in a 15x20-foot dining room, uninstalled.
- Lumber costs vary nationwide, but materials to create your own wainscot using real wood boards and moldings (beautiful but time-consuming) can be less than $100 for a bathroom; $100-$600 or more for a bedroom; and $150-$2,500 or more for a dining room, all depending on the height, style and type of wood and moldings chosen.
- DIYorNOT.com estimates that a carpenter will charge about $500 to install 130 feet of beadboard wainscoting in a 10-by-12-foot room (compared to do-it-yourself materials costing $120).
- A carpenter can custom-build wainscoting onsite, board-by-board, which is time consuming but creates the highest quality appearance. A 10-by-12 room would take an average of 3-5 days, depending on complexity, at $40-$65 an hour, or $1,000-$2,600 for labor alone; the cost of wood would vary widely, from $200-$3,000 or more, depending on the type and quality chosen.
Shopping for wainscoting: | |
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Article updated April 2007 |
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