Beginning of an addiction

My list of improvements to complete around the house is enormous, overwhelming, and forever growing. The worst part of it all, I'm jumping from room to room and cannot focus on one room at a time as I know I should. I need meds. Big time.

Despite my self diagnosed ADD, I'm excited to share that I completed a huge project in the man room this week and I am more than proud of it; I added faux wainscoting to the lower half of my plain, molding free walls to add some interest to the otherwise blah room. Not only did it add nautical flair (my favorite), but it was so stinkin' cheap ($31) and I got to use a big boy girl saw. That's right, I used a power saw. By myself. And I rocked it to achieve this:

Check out that beautiful molding. I am in love <3

Here's how I did it! It's amazingly simple and took me about 4 hours from start to finish, including painting.

Supplies needed: wood strips (I used 8ft foam lattice boards), finishing nails, paint, hammer, saw, tape measure

Let's get started! First things first, I had to decide how far apart I wanted to separate each piece of molding. I did this by simply leaning my molding against the wall until I liked the way it looked. Very technical.

In order to keep my molding equidistant around the room, I used a very handy tool that I have dubbed my "distance stick" (aka leftover shoe molding from the kitchen) so I would not have to measure in between each board, and could just hold up my tool and lay the next board down.

Note: If you can resist singing Lady Gaga's Love Game for the rest of the project you've got me beat. "Let's have some fun, this beat is sick, I wanna take a ride on your distance stick..." Come on, you know you want to.

After I had my distance between each board decided, it was time to measure the height of the molding. I had to measure for three different heights to accommodate my room; baseboard to window molding, baseboard to chair rail, and baseboard heaters to chair rail.

Once I measured and calculated how many pieces of each size I would need, I cut one stencil for each of the sizes and marked how many of each I needed on the stencil.

Next, it was time to cut my boards to size (so fun!) and to begin hammering. I started at the end of one wall and worked my way around the room using my distance stick. So easy.

Once the last board was up, I painted away! I am so in love with the result.

It's amazing how much molding can dress up a room. I'm already planning some future molding projects. Stay tuned!