Wainscoting! Dining Room Complete

I've been excited for weeks to get these pictures up, but wanted to wait until everything was 100% complete in the dining room.  This was definitely the most time-consuming part of our renovation.  Between Renee, John (our ever-patient friend), and myself, there is well over 100 hours put into this room alone.  But in the end, it was definitely worth the effort.  Here is the final product...

Here are some before pictures:

First, we painted the walls:

Then, we installed the crown molding.  Since we put up two-piece crown, we first ran a 1x2 around the room:

Then we installed the crown molding:

Next, we had to remove the original baseboards.  Similar to bedroom windows, the 90-year-old plaster fell apart.  So, we rebuilt the wall with plywood to ensure we had something to nail the base of the wainscoting to.  Additionally, the baseboards were installed before the wood floors, which meant that they went about an inch below the floor.  That made them a really fun 6-hours worth of work to remove!

Next, we installed 5 1/2' tall plywood around the room:

Then, we ran 1x4's along the top of the plywood:

Next, we installed the vertical 1x4's and 1x6 baseboards:

Then came the 1x4's to trim out the squares in the design:

Next, we took 1x3's and routered two plate grooves in it to make the plate rail.  Having two grooves allows you to place different size plates/artwork on the rail, but keep them at similar angle from the wall.  Then, everything looks uniform around the room.  It took a little more work, but is a really cool custom detail.

Last came installing the shoe-molding, calking (every single nail hole and joint, which was a lot!) priming (4-coats!) and painting.  With that we have the final product.  Here is a picture of some of the details around the outlets and light switch:

And, some final pictures:

The only thing left to do in this room is install the new chandelier.  It should be in by mid-February.  We also have our furniture order, so again, there will be more pictures once it's furnished.

I'd like to take this opportunity to give a huge thank you to John.  He not only made this project possible, but also helped me finish our small bedroom upstairs.  Thank you!