This weekend is was a little more progress on installing the beadboard. I had some work stuff to attend to so progress was a little slow and we didn’t finish the entire room. The first cut to deal with was fitting in the light switch outlet. The cut here wasn’t too tricky, but it also involved swapping out the toggle light switch with a pushbutton reproduction switch. For the beadboard cut we just measured out the top and bottom of the box and then dry fit the board to measure how wide to cut. Any adjustments were made using a rasp to trim off excess wood. The toggle light switch was tricky to install not for the wiring part but because the switch was deeper than the previous one. It was a lot of fidgeting with the wires to pack them back into the box to secure the deeper switch.

After getting the outlet, the next challenge is getting past the vent pipe. Most of the board fits behind the pipe, but there is a connector at the bottom of the pipe that bulges out slightly. The board won’t push past this bulge in the pipe. I use a plane to start thinning out the back of the board to see if I can fit it past the pipe bulge. Eventually I’m able to plane away enough of the wood to jam the board behind the pipe.

Once I’m past the pipe, I have to cut a board to fit into the corner. For this I use the same technique I used on the window where I dry fit the last full-sized board and then put a 2nd scribing board over that full-sized board. The scribing board touches the corner and overlaps the last full-sized board. I then draw a pattern on the full-sized board with a pencil and then cut the board to fit.

After getting around the corner, I start approaching the next series of cuts with an outlet, sink pipes, and medicine cabinet. The outlet is the first problem because it’s installed in the plaster with no anchoring. The previous owners just left the outlet floating with an old work box that had some plaster ears in them. One of the ears snapped off, so the box was extremely loose. We tried buying a new old work box with plaster ears, but it didn’t work out well. The amount of plaster was too deteriatored so there wasn’t enough purchase to get a secure grip to the plaster. I noticed the box was not too far from the wall stud so it seemed to be a better approach to move the box over a little and attach to the stud. I bought a box that has angled screws so you can easily attach to a stud when the wall is closed up.

Before wrapping up I install another section of chair rail on a completed section of beadboard. Next week I’ll finish the beadboard and chair rail. I’ll need to look into how to cope inside corners before I tackle the rest of the chair rail installs.