Workshop Wainscoting with Barn & Pallet Wood

How I added Wainscoting to my workshop with the help of my new level! Like I’ve mentioned in past posts I was going to do this entire series about my work shop in “Day” Increments. Such as my first post “My new workshop relocation: Day ONE” and that would have worked fine if only actual days (or even only weeks) had passed since my first post came out… So that was in May…. NINE MONTHS AGO!

There was just one job I had to complete before I could get real excited about anything though and that was protecting my new modem and router.

With that job done I tackled some organization and painted some bins to get myself to the here and now:

Another reason its taken me so long to finally tackle this space is that it just sucks as a workshop. I designed this room as a bedroom!

The lighting is NEVER gonna cut it. The “white” trim is NEVER gonna cut it (or the white ceiling too for that matter) every surface in this place needs work if its ever gonna stand up to me as an ACTUAL workshop.

My first thought (and one I’ve stuck with) is that I at least want wainscoting across the longest wall and behind my workshop tables. This will give me way more durability and also an easy place to hang tools on.

It was time to go downstairs.

My basement story summed up: I designed it (spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours) to make it into a rental suite. My husband (now ex husband!) then decided that he didn’t want a renter. So, I made it my workshop by covering the walls with whatever I had which was a lot of barn and pallet wood.

Well now I’m working for it to become my rental suite again like I had planned! So all the wood has got to go so I can sheet rock down there eventually.

Which means I have a lot of it on hand to use in other projects such as this one.

I decided to be a bit wonky with my wainscoting, I did NOT want it to be perfect or horizontal. I decided to run the boards up and have them all at random different heights.

I took my shortest measurement (a few inches above the bottom trim of the window) and my longest measurement (eight inches longer then that) and headed to my basement.

In my basement I put the majority of the wood up with brad nails so it wasn’t any big deal to just take it all down and make myself a pile. Fortunately I haven’t yet hauled my miter saw out of the basement so the cutting job was quick and easy.

Back upstairs!

In cases like this one you first need to determine where solid boards (no cuts) are most important to you and, also, to keep in mind where you can start to cut down on the amount of cuts you will need to do.

I picked out and cut four special boards for my table edge on both sides. A board for sitting under the table and one for the full edge. I tacked them on with 1 1/2 inch brads and liquid nails and I was off and running.

I went across the whole back wall and I also added a shelf to cover up a gap at the back of one of my tables. To make the tables even I had to pull that one out to be flush at the front with the one on the left because of the window trim.

With all my wainscoting up I sanded it all down with fine grit sand paper until it was smooth to the touch. Now its time to paint!