- 1). Cover the floor beneath the wainscoting with a painter's drop cloth.
- 2). Hold a putty knife at a 45-degree angle and scrape off all loose or flaking paint.. Sand all rough spots on the wainscoting with a 120-grit sanding block. Move the sanding block back and forth and up and down over the area until it is smooth. Go over the wainscoting with a dust brush.
- 3). Pour 1/2 gallon of primer into a paint tray. Dip the bristles of a paintbrush into the primer and paint the perimeter edges of the wainscoting where it meets with the chair rail and baseboards. Paint 4 inches out from these edges into the middle of the wainscoting. Paint up and down, going with the grooves in the wainscoting.
- 4). Dip a roller equipped with a 1/2-inch nap roller cover into the paint tray and roll it back and forth until the fibers are loaded with paint. Screw an extension pole into the handle of the roller frame. An extension pole allows you to paint the wainscoting without having to bend over.
- 5). Go to one side of the wall covered with wainscoting and roll from the top-painted border down to the bottom-painted border. Apply even pressure so that the paint squishes into the grooves of the wainscoting. Overlap the previously painted borders by 2 inches. Re-dip the roller and roll another pass. Overlap the previously painted pass by 2 inches.
- 6). Set the roller in the paint tray and go over the roller-applied paint with a paintbrush in up-and-down strokes from top to bottom. This is called back brushing and is done to keep the paint in the grooves of the wainscoting from running, sagging or dripping. It also spreads the paint evenly. Make another two passes with the roller and then back-brush.
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