I really like katie's wainscoting. I like the idea of changing to that kind of wainscoting for your dining room. It is a hair more formal and I think it might look better than the bead board with your simple, yet classy crystal chandelier.

Kristin42 makes a good point. I think it depends on which way you want the dining room look to "go" - more formal or less formal. That's a beautiful chandelier, BTW.

Hi judydel~

My vote is to mix it up. You already have the beadboard, so go with the shaker next!

We decided on the recessed/shaker wainscoting throughout the house to flow with the kitchen cabinets & interior doors. However, I love beadboard so we used it as the back of all built ins & in the back hall/mudroom/half bath. Don't know if your dining room is visible from your kitchen/stairway, but I think the two wainscotings blend fine.

Still LOVING that RH chandy...

And thanks for your warm words. Really validating.
Katie

I vote for recessed wainscot to make the dining room more formal. We're mixing things up, as well - tall recessed panel wainscot in the dining room and some bead board in the kitchen, breakfast area and keeping room. We didn't want the house to be too "cottagey" in the formal areas, but thought that a little beadboard in the everyday living areas would make those a bit more relaxed.

Also, looking at the picture of your staircase in juxtaposition to katieob's - you might want to have some larger trim at the top of the beadboard wainscot. I think it would really set it off and connect to the dining room if they are visible from each other.

I love your hallway lights. Best of luck - Jo Ann

Thanks everyone for your input and kind words. I am also leaning towards the recessed wainscoting, but not to make the dining area look more formal, but rather because I just love the look. The kitchen and dining areas are really one room semi separated by a raised breakfast bar. The kitchen isn't formal . . . at this point the only thing formal is the chandelier. I am still considering painted formal gustavian repro chairs though. I'm assuming you can't go wrong with recessed shaker wainscoting!?

Katie, thanks for posting more photos. I can see how the beadboard and recessed shaker work very well together.

Joann LOL, I'll have to share your comment to my DH about the trim on top of the beadboard in the stairway . . . he hasn't put any there yet. That's why it doesn't look substantial enough. I've been waiting for him to finish the beautiful job he did by placing some beautiful trim on top. Oh well, he'll get to it someday. In all fairness to him . . . he probably isn't ready to revisit the scene of his accident. When cutting the last piece of beadboard for the stairway, he nearly cut his middle finger off. He had to have surgery and his finger is now mostly back to normal. But it gets stiff overnight, and hurts in the cold. His range of movement and strength is not 100 percent either : (

Katie or anyone else . . . How do you create that recessed panel look? Is that trim on sheetrock or is the whole treatment wood? What kind of wood? How do you get that look without the cost being over the top?

A quick search came up with the link, below, to recessed panel kits. The pictures are pretty good and would probably give DH some ideas on how to do it.

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear about his accident. Thank heavens it wasn't worse. I thought I was just suggesting an item for the "honeydew" list.

To get the look, I think the whole thing needs to be paint grade wood or MDF.

HTH - Jo Ann

Here is a link that might be useful: Recessed Panel Wainscot Kits

are those 3/4" thick stiles and rails you have on the shaker panels. I am planning on 3/4" stiles and rails over the 1/4" veneered plywood in our home, but i started to see some websites that tell you to do 1/2" reveals.

Judydel,
I just ran across this thread and thought I would add my "2 cents". I agree with the posters, I think that the wainscot would look great in your dining room. It gives it a little bit more formal look to it. I have the bead board in my bathroom but in the dining room I put the wainscot and love it! I saw the shaker panel type in a Martha Stewart catalog by mail and that is how I did mine. I have a home built in 1920 so I wanted a more traditional look with straight lines. I already had a chair rail on the dining room wall that I wanted to use with it so I opt out of putting plywood up for the panels. I visited a new home job in my area and saw that they used the dry wall as panel and it looked like it would work for me. So...that is the route that I went with. I put my vertical wood trim 15 inch apart so my panels are 13 inch inside. When I finished all the trim on the wall then I used BM enamel paint of White Dove and painted all of it including the walls(that I used for my fake plywood). You can not tell that it is not plywood unless you look close. If I was able to do a new job I would use plywood but this worked for me since my husband is very ill and I decided this would be my project. Here are some pictures. Good luck to you and I love, love, love your kitchen!
Linda

welcoming!

No advice just a hijack..

Hijack....would love the semi-flush schoolhouse...where and what? Thanks.

Trish

I think you've gotten really great advice about the combo. I have the same picture of Katieob's trim saved as well, it is really pretty and I think would be beautiful with your light --- not too formal, just very pretty. I can think of 2 other people that have great "trim." The first is persnickety --- her judges paneling is great.

The second one is kpaquette. She has it on a wall extending from her kitchen and it is really beautiful, though it is higher than Katieob's paneling. Anyway, since you are in trim mode, and you also have Katie's trim saved (like me) I thought I'd pass along some of my other favorites. I hope it is OK to link pictures?

Can't wait to see it all finished --- eveything in your house looks so great already, this will be one more beautiful detail. Rachel

judydel-i love your pictures! very much the style we are going for. i too vote to mix up the beadbords.
a little off topic-what windows did you use? i LOVE them!

Just as a period reference point, the original woodwork in our 1915 bungalow includes low (2.5') recessed wainscoting in the living room, high (5') recessed wainscoting in the dining room that originally had picture rail on top, and beadboard in the kitchen (sadly that's mostly gone now, but there's still some behind the replacement cabinets from the 30s). I love the variety---I think you can definitely mix and match to your heart's content, and in fact that's what a lot of older homes started out with! So I vote for the recessed panels, too.

Linda your wainscoting is beautiful! Thanks for the photos and taking the time to explain how you accomplished that look. Nice!! And your table setting is gorgous. I've never pulled anything like that off. I'll have to put more effort into my holiday tables.

Mythreesons thanks for all of the great inspiration photos! I see that "anything goes" as far as wainscoting goes. That's good because I love variety. We'll definitely do something other than beadboard. I would definitley like to do recessed shaker panels, just have to make sure my husband is up to it. Maybe it isn't really any more work than the beadboard. That required a lot of cuts and work also. Actually, as I said before he almost cut his finger off doing our stairway beadboard, so if I were him I'd want to do something different!!

I appreciate all of the words of encouragement and compliments. It's exciting that our home is finally coming together. Before it was still HOME, but now it's going to be pretty also : ) But of course now we have to do ALL of the rooms over. You can't prettyize one room and then not do the next, and the next, and the next.

Linda the windows in our whole house are by Marvin. They have the simulated divided lights which are really great. On the outside the divided lights are made out of some kind of cladding that is armour tight. On the inside the divided lights are made out of wood and they are permanently affixed to the glass. There are spacer bars in between the double panes of low e glass so that the window really looks like true divided lights even though they are not. You have to wash each pane individually, like with true divided lights, which can be a bit of a pain . . . but it's worth it imo for the look.

When we did our bathroom "wainscot", we just painted the sheetrock and applied the trim over that. My dh made the trim out of poplar.

Timber that sounds like an inexpensive solution! Do you have any photos? Are you happy with how it came out? TIA

Here is a picture of the kids bath:

It was an inexpensive solution, and allowed me to do a bright color without overwhelming the whole room, LOL. I decided against beadboard for that room because I wanted something easier to clean. So, yes, I am happy with it. Simple, easy to clean, inexpensive.

I know what you mean about about needing to do one room after another. The pictures I've seen of your rooms in progress are very nice!

If we don't hurry up and get the rest of our house done, the first rooms we finished will be needing to be repainted again...It is a long slow process when it is mostly DIY.

Judy - I like the simpler one too. I had asked KPaquette about hers once and she said their carpenter did it by just applying the trim pieces as timber.j did. Seems almost too easy. Your house is soooo pretty - I'm sure whatever you pick will look great.

Love the katieob's wainscoting! We have something very similar in our dining room, and it's one of my favorite features of the room. We don't have beadboard in a visually adjoining space, but there is beadboard in the powder room. I think it all works really nicely together. It's an older house (1935), but the trimwork is not original.