Wainscoting (board & batten) construction dilemma..

7 years ago

Need some ideas on how to not make this project overly complex.

We are doing board & batten style wainscoting in our dinning room going 2/3rds the way up the wall. It will be the style where you have the smaller box/rectangle towards the top and the long rectangles below it.

So here's the dilemma. All of our cased openings and windows will be trimmed out with 1 by wood. Therefor i wanted all the vertical and horizontal battens to be flush. But because are walls are in rough shape and i wanted a consistent surface finish, i planned to use 1/8" hardboard. But if i just put that on the wall and then lay the 1 by's battens on top of that, they will stick our further than the cased windows and openings. So i can only think of these couple of options:

Use my planner to plane down all the batten lumber by 1/8" so that i can just apply it directly over the hardboard.
Use my router and put rabbet's on all the battens and then install them directly to the wall. This would require custom fitting hardboard panels to each section.
Leave the 1 by's battens as is and when they terminate by a cased opening, somehow chamfer it or taper it into the casing.

Ideas?

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Comments (4)

rwiegand
7 years ago
Planing the wood to the correct thickness seems pretty straightforward, assuming you have a planer.

1/8" hardboard is probably not going to stay flat on its own, if your battens are a typical distance apart I can imagine it will develop waves and bubbles over time with humidity changes. You might do better with slightly thicker (I'd use 1/4") birch plywood. Thin MDF would also work for a painted surface.
seabornman
7 years ago
You could install a backband trim around casing:
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ci_lantro
7 years ago
Backband around the casing like he^ said or some other build up on the casing--will save you a lot of work as well as making the trim look more interesting.
PRO
PPF.
7 years ago
All your trim needs to be considered when doing a project like this -- base, casing, window stool and apron.

I prefer to have a reveal, or small setback where one component meets another, so in your case, I would hold the stiles and rails forming the paneling back (they would be thinner) from the face of the window casing.

This shows a 1/8" step where the base meets the door casing, and a 1/4" step where the paneling stile meets the door casing.