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[1] .
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[2] 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.
Georgia-Pacific is one of the major wainscot panel/kit manufacturers.
Wainscoting is sold by Home Depot[3] , DecoMoldings.com[4] , BurtonMoldings.com[5] and Vintage Wood Works[6] .
To find carpenters specializing in trim work, whether it's installing prefab or building custom wainscot, search the National Association of the Remodeling Industry[7] .
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Had Madd Construction install 172 square feet of custom mid paint grade wainscoting in our dinning room. Looks amazing and they did a great job for the second to cheapest bid (out of 5).
45 sq ft with 48 inch high wainscot, and chair rail (which was actually crown moulding) installed for $700. They did an amazing job helping me go for a vintage look.
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