Column Me Crazy, But This Column Looks GREAT!

I've always had a thing for molding. Crown, chair rail, wainscoting, bead board, window and door trim, you name it! I guarantee most of the time if I see or "Pin" a post online of a room I LOVE it has molding of some sort featured in it. I think there is something about it that just makes a house feel more like a home to me. So I knew I'd be putting as much molding around as I could when we bought.

**side note our miter saw and nail gun are my favorite power tool purchases with exception of my cordless drill. We have this miter saw and this nail gun and love them! They make these types of projects MUCH easier and are a must for new homeowners especially ones needing to upgrade a few things.

We have four fairly large "columns" in our downstairs living area spreading from the foyer to the kitchen. There is nothing seriously unappealing about them other than they are huge drywall columns lacking personality and overflowing with orange peel texture.

I have been wanting to throw on some molding for months now to update the look but wasn't sure where to start since I have never attempted anything like this so I started with Pinterest (of course). I found a plethora of pictures featuring beautiful columns and picked a few for inspiration. After sketching out my plan with dimensions I headed to Home Depot
and picked up the following:

-(8) 2.5" by 8' primed MDF boards

-(1) 4x8 sheet of 1/8" MDF 

-(2) 1x4x8' boards 

-(1) 8' chair rail

-(1) 12' decorative PVC molding 

-(1) white caulk for molding and trim

I knew I wanted to "beef up" the baseboards and because I had already done it with our bar makeover I knew HOW to. I just added a 1x4x8 board on top of my existing baseboard (mitered the edges so it fit perfectly) and popped on some chair rail on top of that. 

I then used my nail gun to secure the 2.5"x 8' primed MDF boards on each corner of the column overlapping so they made a clean edge. I also made sure the "seams" were on the SAME side of the column

I also had my assistant make sure everything was matching up evenly. It did, thank  goodness,otherwise he would have cracked the whip!

 Once the MDF's were all up it left me with a gap at the top. I had planned to replicate what I did with the baseboards by putting the 1x4x8 boards on top of the vertical MDF boards and chair rail on top where the ceiling met the column so it looked like this:

**I later felt like it needed something else and added the PVC molding on top of the 1x4x8 boards. You can check it out in the final pics.

I knew I couldn't live with the texture on the column so I had the Hubs cut my 4x8 1/8" thick MDF sheet to strips that would fit inside the rectangular sections. If I wasn't so cheap next time I might consider covering the ENTIRE column with the MDF sheet FIRST and then put the molding on top of that. Getting the strips to fit perfectly inside wasn't that easy but I knew caulk would fix any mistakes later on. I also might search around to see if they make primed MDF sheets...it was sort of tough to cover.

I filled all the nail holes and knots in the wood with putty and caulked all the seams then painted everything with a bright white semi-gloss trim paint. I absolutely forgot to take pictures with the MDF sheets on or any of the filling, caulking and painting process...meh it would have bored you anyway!

AND THE FINAL...

I liked the outcome so much I went ahead and tackled the other one on the other side of the bar immediately after!

This really was an easy project and very inexpensive for such a dramatic makeover! I think the hardest thing was figuring out those miter cuts, they can be confusing for a math-challenged girl like myself.