Wall protection cladding

For my dining room I have had the problem that the wall behind the chairs tended to get dirty over time. The reasons for this were mainly two reasons for this: The small room for the chairs so they touched the wall pretty often when people were sitting down or getting up from the chair and second my kids often touched the wall when they were trying to get to and on the chairs.

I already had seen similar wall claddings at waiting rooms where many chairs are placed directly at the wall. So I thought I should build my own version with an invisible mounting solution and a nice look for the dining room.

Buying a board and screw it on to the wall - that’s not my way, it’s not only a protection but an enhancement for the feel of living in the room.

My requirements/features for this wall cladding:

hidden fastening solution
cutouts for light switches and so on
a really smooth surface

I used an 18mm oak wood glued panel board and cut it into the two pieces for the two walls. The board has already had the final height of 400mm so I had to cut it only to the desired length.

I used my Makita compact router for shaping the edges and doing the cutout for the light switches. To do this I had to build a simple template first, i did that with the help of my compound miter saw. The template has a two times four mm offset (larger than the desired result) since the router bushing is 4 mm larger than the router bit.

Mounting at the right position with having the exact position for the cuttings for the light switches and all other hooks, this had been the challenge.

Follow these steps to succeed:

determine the final position for the board
cut the board to the final length
beginn with shaping the cutouts by your router for the light switch or whatever is in the way of your cladding
use the upper or lower end of the cutouts as reference for both, the wall holes for the screws and the hooks for the board side

Difficulty level: beginner to intermediate

Used Tools: Compound miter saw, Makita compact router, drill

Hope you like it, I really would appreciate if you leave me a comment below.