Beadboard

There is nothing like beadboard to bring charm, detailing, and casualness to a space. I love the stuff! I spent today installing beadboard wallpaper, one of my all-time favorite decorating tools, under our foyer chair rail.  I've wanted to put it everywhere since I first discovered it. My favorite way to use it is to paint it a crisp white paired with a muted wall color. In the foyer, though I've tried a different approach. I'm trying the color ON the beadboard paired with a soft creamy yellow on the walls. I'll share the during photos below. But first, take a look at these images and see why I don't see how you can ever go wrong with beadboard! (Unless otherwise stated, all images are from Nantucket Beadboard Company .)

Beadboard on walls and cabinet fronts. 

Below chair rails and just a shade darker than walls.

Soft white beadboard on the walls paired with dark stained floors - gorgeous!

Set inside wainscoting panels.
via Future Domestic Goddess Blog

In the bathroom below a chair rail painted the same color as the walls.
via Katyelliot.com

Here's some color applied to the beadboard walls and paired with crisp white trim and accents.
via Pottery Barn

Crisp white wainscoting paired with painted walls. Gives a very clean feeling.

Used as a kitchen backsplash. I did this in my last house and it really adds charm to the kitchen.

Added to kitchen cabinets (this could be done very easily with beadboard wallpaper!).

On the walls again in a little reading nook. Love this space!

On doors and inside bunk recesses instead of main walls. Becomes more of an accent this way.

The upstairs of that stair image shown before. Below chair rails. This is one of my favorite uses.

What do you do, though, if you're a girl without or uncomfortable with power tools? Two options are available: hire someone to put it in for you (Seriously? Isn't this blog about DIY and inspiring you to try new things? This is not that hard to learn.) or use beadboard wallpaper. Now, there are some wallpapers out there that just look cheesy. There is only one that I've found so far that I think looks like the real deal.  It's Graham and Brown's Paintable Wallpaper in Beadboard:

via Graham and Brown

via Graham and Brown

This is what it looks like unpainted up close.
via Graham and Brown

The great thing about this stuff is it's paintable, easy to hang, supposedly easy to remove (I've never wanted to take it down), and there's little waste. There's no pattern to line up and match, either. All you need is a level to get your first line drawn vertically, then line it up and go! It isn't pre-pasted, but truthfully, I prefer unpasted wallpaper. That way you don't have such a mess when hanging it. There is one major drawback to using it, though. It tears pretty easy if punctured or scratched. It's not the best option in heavy traffic areas. I started to hang it in our hallways but then thought better with three boys and a dog. It's gotta be the tough real stuff in there. But, I figured I could get away with it in the foyer because I keep enough furniture in front of it to protect it. Truth be told, I think the cost would be about the same for the sheet's of beadboard, but not the real deal tongue and grove stuff.

All installed but not painted.

I love some white beadboard, but I"m trying something new by painting it. It's not the norm to paint the chair rail and wainscoting a different color from the trim, but I'm experimenting. I'm loving this combination of the chair rail color (The five gallon bucket I found on the oops shelf - awesome color!) with the current creamy wall color. The beadboard is going the same color. Very cozy and soothing, but I need to live with it being different from the trim a while to determine how I like breaking up the consistency. The good thing is, if I don't like it, I can always paint it back white. 

See my new wall vignette? Recognize the plates? They never made it to the booth:)

Now, to get the final details finished up for a finished reveal of dining room and foyer!

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I'm Obessessed!

I'm just on a roll. Like I said before, I get an idea in my head and I fixate on it. Too bad it can't be the second set of draperies I'm working on right now! Instead it's my dining room I can't quit thinking about.

My kitchen was supposed to be the target for a makeover this summer. I want to paint the cabinets in there so bad I can't stand it. But, for some reason, I have gotten fixed on making my dining room more "workable" for me. Maybe it's because I've spent so much time in there lately sewing. Guess it's a good time of year for that as it's only... +/- 100 degrees outside!

I digress. Remember me saying I was going to neutralize the walls? Now that I've decided on the fixture redo, I'm working on the walls. I just am not getting to excited about ANY color I've looked at to repaint. I want to lighten and neutralize, but no color seems to be getting me in a tizzy. So, I had another idea. I love wallpaper, but darn it all...could I pick a harder room to do? What about going with a good textural element like a tone-on-tone or grasscloth? If money were no object, I'd be placing an order right now for a creamy metallic neutral grasscloth from Phillip Jefferies.

via Phillip Jefferies
Ooh la la!

Phillip Jefferies Large Damask 5128
Me likey!

I'm thinking a damask in a similar pattern to what's on the existing curtains like above. What a great juxtaposition it would be with the modern vibe of my boys' artwork that I still plan to keep front and center. It just seems like that huge expanse of space over the wainscoting needs more than just paint, but something subtle. I want to be able to change out the colors and decor scheme if I get sick of one and I am constantly surrounded by color on projects, so thus the need for neutral. I'm guessing that unless one of you kind suppliers [who might] be reading this feel like donating a stencil or wallpaper for me to "sell" to my readers (fingers crossed!), I'm probably going to end up doing a linen like paint treatment or a pearlscent stencil treatment (that I create) over a cream to achieve the same effect. And, I really need to pull this transformation off fairly quick as I also have furniture to redo and sell and veggies to freeze/can at the same time. Figures:)

I also want to paint the ceiling a super pale, barely there aqua blue. I want to create the feeling of wide open sky where the imagination can take flight since this is where I want to have family dinners on an old rustic farm table and work on projects when we're not eating. Nothing makes my imagination go into overdrive than feeling like I'm on top of the world.

This beautiful color I love and I've used before, but I'd probably cut it in half when mixing to go even lighter (it's actually lighter than it looks on screen):



Glidden's Almost Aqua

Then, I'd put a fresh coat of white trim paint on the ceiling medallion. I pulled together a composite in Photoshop of this room redone to the best of my ability. Want to see? Yea, me too. I nearly had a breakdown last night when my lovely computer decided to corrupt the file I'd spent forever on to show you! It should have been a quick computer "makeover", but my Mac kept crashing on me so it took about two days off and on to make. Then it just decided to wipe it out the last time it crashed. UGH!!!!! So, I'm going manual with this one. I'm going to pull together an old fashion mock up of sorts...on paper. Then I'll scan it to share with you. I've got this image coming together in my head of where I'm going with this, like always, except this time I'm going to actually put it on paper so everyone else can see what I'm thinking (SCARY!).