Wainscoting with Shelf

Adding wainscoting to a room can significantly dress it up, making the home look richer. Wealthy people have used it for years to make their homes stand out. Others don’t bother to because of the expected high wainscoting cost. But if you do the wainscoting yourself, you can install it for as little as about a dollar per square foot.

Of course, a lot will depend on the materials you choose to use and the style you want to achieve. Solid hardwood wainscot is going to be expensive, no matter what you do. But painted wainscot can be made of lower-cost materials, like MDF, saving a lot of money.

Originally, wainscoting served two purposes: to provide more insulation by making a wall thicker (even though it isn’t good insulation) and to protect the wall from damage. But modern homes don’t need a wainscot for either of these purposes, and even a chair rail is not considered necessary to protect the walls. Nevertheless, adding wainscot is still worth doing, giving you a way of making boring drywall walls look much more appealing.

Wainscot almost always incorporates a chair rail at the top edge. This also had a purpose: protecting the wall from damage caused by people pushing their chairs back into it. That sort of damage can still happen today with drywall walls. While drywall is easier to repair than plaster, it is hard to hide the damage and can be even harder to match the paint.

If you’re going through the trouble of installing wainscoting, adding a shelf at the top isn’t much additional work. In fact, with some of the chair rail moldings currently available, it’s just a matter of trimming out the top of the wainscot with one molding rather than another.

Adding a shelf at the top of the wainscoting provides space to display pictures or small collectibles. Families who have a lot of either may want to install wainscoting with a shelf just to gain the extra display space. A game room provides a place to set a drink or snack. But if a home has small children, that shelf will need to be out of their reach, keeping little hands away from things that are easily broken.

Wainscoting Design

Typically, wainscoting is installed to go about 1/3 of the way up the wall, so 30” to 32” in a home with 8’ ceilings. An alternate design is to install wainscoting 2/3 of the way up the wall to make a high shelf. This puts the shelf 5’ to 6’ off the floor, an excellent height for displaying items but not enough height for putting pictures, so it’s essential to think through what will be displayed on the shelf before building the wainscot.

Five basic styles of wainscoting can be installed in a home, with one variation that can be added to any of them:

• Wall paneled: Rails and stiles are mounted on the wall, with the drywall as the center panel. The drywall can either be painted to match the color of the rails and stiles or left painted the color of the upper part of the wall. 
• Flat Paneled – Similar to Wall Paneled, this method adds a smooth board, like thin ¼” thick hardwood plywood, to fill the panel area. Flat-paneled wainscot is popular when it is made of hardwood, but a simple style is desired. 
• Raised Panels—Taking their name and style from raised panel doors, these use a panel shaped along the edges so that the center part can be raised. Usually, it is at the same level as the rails and stiles, although some people prefer it higher. 
• Overlay Panel – This combines flat panel and raised panel wainscoting. A flat panel wainscot is installed, and then raised panels are attached, centered on the flat panels, with enough space to distinguish between the overlay and the flat panel. 
• Beaded Panel—Like Flat-Paneled wainscoting, this uses a flat board to fill the panel area. The difference is that the flat board used is tongue-in-groove beaded paneling strips. This gives the room an older “country” feel. 
• Board and Batten—Any of the above can be modified to include a board and batten element. This consists of usually narrow vertical boards installed to cover the seams between boards. Double styles might be installed to allow the addition of these battens overlaying the seams. 

Wainscoting can be painted or stained and varnished. Wood, especially dark wood, tends to make the room appear smaller. Lighter-colored woods, like oak, don’t do this as badly. But painting the wainscot will lighten the room, helping it look larger. A white painted wainscot, with a colored drywall wall above it, is attractive.

Installing a Wainscot

Installing a wainscot is very easy. It’s best to do so before installing the baseboard. However, if you have a thin wainscot, you can avoid putting it above the existing baseboard.

The rails and stiles for wainscot can either be made of solid hardwood boards or cut from strips of hardwood plywood. A lot depends on the specific look desired. If no molding is going to be used to cap off the cut edge of the rails and stiles, then it’s good to use solid boards or something that doesn’t have a lot of visible grain texture on the edge, like MDF.

In any case, where a panel is used (flat panel, raised panel, or beaded panel), the boards used for the rails and stiles need to be rabbet cut, providing a relief channel for the panel to sit in. However, this isn’t necessary if trim will be used around the edges of the panel.

The first piece to be installed is always the bottom rail. It should be glued and finished nailed at each stud. Once that is in place, snap a line for the bottom of the top rail. This will be necessary to ensure that the stiles are the right length as they are installed.

With the bottom rail in place, the tiles can be installed, and each one must be checked to ensure they come even with the snapped line. No gaps or high points should be allowed. Don’t start working from the corner, as corners might not be vertical or straight. Instead, work into the corner so all the stiles end up vertically. In any situation where a panel is used, panels should be installed with the stiles, alternating between the panels and the stiles to ensure spacing.

In addition to cutting flat panels or using board and beading, both milled and molded panels can be purchased for the panel portion of the wainscot. Some synthetic materials look quite authentic once painted.

Once all the stiles and panels are in, the top rail can be installed, making sure it fits snugly on top of the stiles without any gaps. This rail is then topped with some sort of chair rail or trim. Trim might also be applied around the inside of the panels, covering the end grain and providing a more visually interesting frame for the panel. Install the baseboard over the bottom rail.

Adding the Shelf

All it takes to add a shelf to the wainscot is to purchase a chair rail molding with a built-in shelf. The shelf portion of this trim will usually be 2” to 3”, which isn’t very big. However, this problem can easily be solved by adding a piece of dimensional lumber, either a 1”x 4” or a 1”x 6” flush above the chair rail molding, providing a wider shelf.

When installing this additional piece of dimensional lumber, wood glue, and finish nails should be used. Nails alone may not provide the necessary strength, especially if people lean against the shelf. Nails alone could pull out, but nails with glue will make for a strong shelf.

Keep in mind that adding this shelf will take space from the room. Furniture won’t be able to sit snug up against the wall unless it is shorter than the wainscot. That’s the tradeoff to get the shelf space.

Chair Rail with Shelf

A shelf can be added just as easily to a chair rail as to a wainscot. All that’s required is the same chair rail molding that would be used with the wainscot, installed solo. It might also still be necessary to add the extra piece of dimensional lumber on top to end up with a shelf wide enough for the purpose.

This can work very nicely with built-in bookcases or cabinets, allowing the chair rail shelf to go up the side of the shelf, making the whole look as if it belonged together and was planned that way. But it doesn’t look good if the shelf sticks out farther than the built-in. Such cases should be avoided. If they can’t be, angle cut the end of the shelf so that there isn’t a sharp corner left for people to run into.