"Can I leave the base layer of the wainscoting as dry wall ... and just add the vertical wood stiles over it...?"

Yes, if it's the apparance of wainscoting you're after and not the durability of actually paneling your lower walls.

Wainscot can be attached directly to drywall. I attached it in my home office using paneling adhesive (fits into a caulk gun) and finishing nails. The wainscot planks I bought from Home Depot came with a grooved baseboard and chair rail, but I jerryrigged a slightly different solution so that I could salvage the tall baseboard in my home.

Here's a tutorial! Good Luck!

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContentView?pn=Installing_Beaded_Board_Wainscoting&langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

I used Minwax Wood Sheen to give my wainscot a colorwashed/pickled look. (Special order from Ace) but paint would do nicely. Home Depot does have large panels of MDF wainscot, but I thought the real thing looked better.

We're a bit wainsncoting crazy in our house. We've done both painted and wood-stained. Here's how we did our painted wainscoting in the entry.

Here's how we did our stained wainsctiong in the living room.

We did a board & batten style wainscoting in a loft space and also in my boy's room. As long as you have smooth walls (not heavily textured) you can get away with skipping the panels and only doing the vertical battens and a top board. Pay attention to your baseboards, if your battens are too thick then you might consider replacing them.

See these posts:

http://www.centsationalgirl.com/2011/03/board-and-batten-complete/

http://www.centsationalgirl.com/2011/01/style-storage-a-bare-wall-transformed/

Hope this helps!
Kate

Thanks for asking this question. I've been researching this, too, and have read the comments with interest. And I have many questions, too.

What depth boards do you use? I'm thinking that I'm just going to use vertical boards (with a shelf on top and baseboards on the bottom straight on my plaster walls, not panelling. But I've been trying to figure out whether to use 1x boards or 1/2 inch boards, or 1/4 inch...

Anyone have any thoughts?

We purchased beadboard plywood from Home Depot to do this, rather than the vinyl packs that are super expensive. If you have a table saw, you can rip it easily to size and use a finish nailer to attach to the wall. We then used baseboard and chail rail moldings to cover the exposed edges. You can even add a shelf if you are handy. We painted ours a off-white, I believe it was Behr Cottage White, and it looks beautiful. I refuse to paint any molding bright white anymore, the slightly off white adds a big difference in its appeal. We chose a good glossy paint to make it washable. Also, make sure to prime the wood if you buy the plywood beadboard, and paint it before connecting to the wall. It creates less mess and uneven paint lines by just having to go spot paint the finish nailer holes.

Hope this helps...I don't know if this is modern enough for you, but this is our own experience!

If you're putting over existing wall material (drywall or plaster) use the thinnest you can get. I used 3/8" for stain grade work in my sisters living room. Liquid nails paneling adhesive in caulk gun works great, I used a nail gun on the bottoms as well, but honestly the liquid nails will hold it alone.

Thanks for all the tips and comments! Impatient me started this project this weekend and so far its coming along great. It eases my mind that I ended up doing a lot of the things mentioned in these comments!!

I will definitely make a detailed tutorial of our project and post it on my blog for all the see! Stay tuned.

We did leave the wall between the rails exposed. We used 3/4" D x 3-1/2" W pieces of Pine purchased from Lowes. 3/4" was the thickness of our exiting base molding, so this will make it a very clean flush connection. For the chair rail we just purchased more of the same Pine wood to put horizontally along the top. We may add some decorative trim or a shelf if we think it looks boring.

To install we used Liquid Nails for the rails (which worked great) and some 3" finishing nails for the chair rail into studs. We filled in the seams with some wall finish so there is no gaps between the wood and the wall, and sanded any excess once it dried.

We are all primed and our next step is to paint. We decided on a bright white semi-gloss since our wedding china is a bright glossy white.

My DIY tutorial as promised :]

http://sherylandmike.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/how-to-diy-wainscoting/