Installing wainscoating

[Lee Schierer]

Our dining room has wainscoating that is made up of hardwood panels with a realistic wood overlay. LOML wants to get rid of that and install real wood. She likes the T&G beaded wainscoating with one beaded edge that our local hardwood supplier carries. Our walls are plaster over blueboard and the studs are 16" on center. The wainscoating comes in 2-1/4" widths. I know I can nail the bottom edge into the sill with long pin nails, but there is nothing at the middle and top to nail into. Here's the question. How does one attach this to the walls. I don't want to use adhesives to attach it to the wall. Do I glue up sections and only nail it every 16" where it is over a stud? Or do I nail it at the bottom and let the chair rail secure the top? What did they do before adhesives?

[Julian Nicks]

You need to use construction adhesive to glue the individual panels to the wall. The only other option would be to glue the pieces to a backer of mdf or plywood then nail that up against the wall with no glue.

[Greg Johnson]

Lee,
I have done a fair amount of this in my home. The blind nails really have more holding power in sheetrock than you would think. They are going in at a 45 degree angle work similar to a picture hanger. The angle does hold quite a bit. Then, of course the chair rail finishes the job. I have done this and then years later had to remove it from the wall and it is amazing how tight they were against the wall with simple 16ga. nails shot into sheetrock.

Hope this helps,
Greg

[David DeCristoforo]

You can apply 1/2" plywood "sleepers" under the wainscoting. I use 3 4" wide strips, one at he the top and bottom and one in the center, screwed to the studs. This, by "default" also creates a bit deeper top cap (or chair rail) which I like. It also does much less damage to the wall in the event that you would ever want to remove the wainscoting (possibly why you don't want to glue it?).

[Prashun Patel]

Why the fear of adhesive? If you ever have to rip it out, re-rocking the lower 1/3 of the wall isn't a big deal.

[Lee Schierer]

Why the fear of adhesive? If you ever have to rip it out, re-rocking the lower 1/3 of the wall isn't a big deal.

Except my walls are plaster (over blue board not lath) not sheetrock and are 5/8 thick with a slight texture that would be difficult to replicate. I don't want to use glue in case I have to take it out. I've seen miles of this stuff in older homes and they didn't use glue 50 years ago, so how did they do it so it holds up for that long?

[Maurice Ungaro]

You can apply 1/2" plywood "sleepers" under the wainscoting. I use 3 4" wide strips, one at he the top and bottom and one in the center, screwed to the studs. This, by "default" also creates a bit deeper top cap (or chair rail) which I like. It also does much less damage to the wall in the event that you would ever want to remove the wainscoting (possibly why you don't want to glue it?).

+1!!!
Use the sleepers (ie: furring strips), and installation will be a breeze. Plus, you'll alway sink a nail into wood.

[Sam Layton]

Lee, I just finished my bath with wainscoting. I glue and nailed 1/4" ply to the wall first. That gave me continuous nailing anywhere I wanted, as well as furring out the wainscoting. You don't need to glue in your case. Just nail ply or sleepers to the studs.

As David indicated, by furring out your wainscoting with ply/sleepers, it allows you a wider top cap.

Sam

[Neal Clayton]

Except my walls are plaster (over blue board not lath) not sheetrock and are 5/8 thick with a slight texture that would be difficult to replicate. I don't want to use glue in case I have to take it out. I've seen miles of this stuff in older homes and they didn't use glue 50 years ago, so how did they do it so it holds up for that long?

with nails alone, but in older homes any and all trim would've been put up over the basecoat, and then the skim coat of plaster applied afterward. the result is the trim being encased in the plaster, which serves two purposes. 1) that's how the gaps between trim and wall were sealed, 2) it didn't let the trim move or separate all that much, because the wall itself held it in place.

so if ya wanted to do it the old school way, you'd just put up your wainscot with nails and have your plasterer come in and skim the walls again after.

but david's solution works without having the plasterer come back out ;).

btw i'm not sure if this is a newer house or an older house that had the lath+plaster replaced with blueboard+plaster. if the latter, the walls might not be all that flat, because old rough studs aren't all that flat either. if the wall isn't very flat 15 guage finish nails from a gun won't hold well enough, from my experience, you'd be better off using trim head screws or at least a rough/serrated nail.

[bill mullin]

Except my walls are plaster (over blue board not lath) not sheetrock and are 5/8 thick with a slight texture that would be difficult to replicate. I don't want to use glue in case I have to take it out. I've seen miles of this stuff in older homes and they didn't use glue 50 years ago, so how did they do it so it holds up for that long?

Whether ya' nail it, glue it, use backer boards, whatever, you're gonna have a bunch of patching to do after you take it out anyway.
Blind nail at bottom, and use a small dab of adhesive and blind nail at top.

[William Schmitz]

Going a bit deeper into old school traditional methods (say 1930s and earlier), you will notice the surface of the wainsot is in the same plane as the plaster above, with the chair rail covering the gap. This gives a more integrated (versus built up and applied) look to the waiscot. It also provides a cleaner look against other trim - baseboard, casings, aprons, etc - as they do not need to be build up so much to cover the applied wainscot.

It is somwhat of an archaic technique in this age of cheap drywall, but made sense back then as why would you go to the trouble of putting up plaster and lath that you would then cover? Also, you have the issue of all that moisture in the plaster. Plaster was expensive and time consuming and messy.

To do this technique you would need to cut out the drywall. It is more prep at this early stage, but if you have many doors and windows to contend with will save time working out these problems later on.

[William Nimmo]

I have tongue and groove wainscoting all over my house. None of it is glued or nailed anywhere. Nail in the bottom rail, or baseboard and either buy it with or add a rabbet for the insertion of the tongue and grooved piece. Put all pieces up and they should stay put until you add the chair rail moulding. This way they float and move as they like but not enough for you to notice. I might have used a touch of construction adhesive on a few tricky pieces, like near and outlet .

[Neal Clayton]

Going a bit deeper into old school traditional methods (say 1930s and earlier), you will notice the surface of the wainsot is in the same plane as the plaster above, with the chair rail covering the gap. This gives a more integrated (versus built up and applied) look to the waiscot. It also provides a cleaner look against other trim - baseboard, casings, aprons, etc - as they do not need to be build up so much to cover the applied wainscot.

It is somwhat of an archaic technique in this age of cheap drywall, but made sense back then as why would you go to the trouble of putting up plaster and lath that you would then cover? Also, you have the issue of all that moisture in the plaster. Plaster was expensive and time consuming and messy.

To do this technique you would need to cut out the drywall. It is more prep at this early stage, but if you have many doors and windows to contend with will save time working out these problems later on.

since i'm working on such a place i can help with pics ...at least baseboard pics, my house doesn't have wainscot ;)

here's how it was done Lee....

you can see on the right the basecoat below, and the lath does go down a bit, but the basecoat was just kinda slapped on there at random intervals, and built up at a certain thickness to make a flat plane for the baseboards to rest against. they could go a bit thicker or a bit thinner with each goop to make the baseboards flat against the wall, since the studs are rough and therefore not on a flat plane. the skim coat stops at the point where the base cap would've been. disregard the grey, that's my patch work with setting compound. universally it was left at least an inch or so short of the floor, to prevent the floor from pushing up on the plaster and causing cracks during settlement.

the pic on the left is the complete three piece baseboard, tried to find a piece with drywall screws in the blueboard to give an idea of scale. so when the plaster is done, if this were a traditional lath/plaster job, the plaster would be on the same plane as the middle section of the baseboard, as william is saying, only the shoe and the cap would appear to stand out.

[Josiah Bartlett]

I used rabbeted top and bottom moldings and nailed through the tongues of the wainscot at an angle with a brad nailer like you would lay flooring. Its not going anywhere.

I have a mixture of wood lath & plaster and drywall in my house. It works for both.