Just like the Abbey

I'm obsessed with Downton Abbey! I wish I lived there. Have you noticed every room at Downton Abbey has some kind of wall panelling? Chair rail, wood panelling, wainscoting etc... Obviously I need to make my house look more like Downton Abbey so I can wander around pretending I'm Mary Crawley and ordering people to pour my tea while staring at myself in the mirror.

 Sigh. I really should have been born the daughter of an Earl sometime in the early 20th century England. I would have been SOO good at it.

So, with the help of my awesome dad (the Earl of Grantham), we're installing wainscoting in our dining room. It will probably look like look nothing like this when we're done:

The dining room at Downton Abbey

I started by taking all the measurements of the room:

We needed 363" or 30.25' of chair rail (we added up all the wall lengths to determine this). And then to create the boxes within the chair rail space, we doubled that, and then figured each box would be 22' high, and then figured out how many boxes we would do AND OH MY GOD THIS IS SO BORING WHO CARES.

Anyways. We went to home depot and bought chair rail and decorative moulding. The Earl told me how much to buy and so that is how much I bought. Let's not turn this into a math lesson ok?

Then we drew guidelines for the chair rail and the boxes on the wall. It looks like some kind of ghetto Trompe-l'œil.

 
I can't wait until this is done. The dining room is currently so boring and beige. I've got some wallpaper samples on the way to check out for above the chair rail.

See the candidates on my pinterest board. And stay tuned for more pictures of the progress!