Board & Batten Walls In A Weekend
You know we all do that thing where we say "one day we'll do...". I'm all for planning and working out the details, but sometimes we just keep pushing off things! Well since I closed my store location, I thought, what's holding me back from doing the things I want to do now. Yes having a physical shop location was extremely demanding, I promise I'm not complaining because it was fun. However because it was demanding, there was a laundry list of small and big projects our home needed. I'd been thinking of adding board and batten to our dining room walls for a long while, so I thought no time like the present.
Here's a before picture of our dining room before we started. Yes, I have a cat and yes he scratches the chairs.
I literally told my husband over morning coffee, I want to add Board & Batten in the dining room and I'd love to start on it today. After having to explain what Board & Batten was, we started discussing materials and project cost. An hour later, he was out picking up materials, to start on it that day. Y'all this poor man, I'm very ambitious and he often gets drug along for the ride. Seriously, I'm a very lucky women, to have this man by my side, because between the two of us, there isn't much we can't accomplish or overcome together.
After he returned from picking up materials, he took down the chair rail and baseboards. Once that was down and I scraped the old caulk lines, then decided to skim coat the wall with joint compound to even out the texture and fix any spots from the chair rail & baseboard removal. While I was doing that, he started cutting & installing the top and bottom boards. We decided to have a five inch board as our baseboard instead of the original baseboard. Honestly, I just couldn't wrap my head around keeping our old baseboards, it just wouldn't have look that great. I should mention the sizes we used are a five inch primed board for the baseboards and primed four inch board for the top & vertical boards.
We hung the top board of our Board & Batten at the height of 58". Now we played around with that number till I was happy, so by all means go as high as you'd like.
Once the baseboards, quarter round and top boards were installed, we had to figure out how much to space out our vertical boards. We had outlets to work around and I wanted to do my best to keep them spaced evenly. We spaced the vertical boards 18" apart on the large wall, the other walls we're spaced evenly except a few boards, just to ensure the outlet and light switch were not covered. My husband did do little cutout in the boards to show me how it would look. Obviously I decided against that, it felt more cohesive to have a few boards a few inches off rather than have cutout in them.
Once we finished the install of the boards, we caulked all seems. That included where the boards met the wall, between boards, and I also used wood filler on all nail holes. Probably the most annoying step in this whole process, but trust me it will make it look more professional and seamless. Once that was done, I needed to prime the boards and the area's I skim coated with joint compound. We also decided to go ahead and paint the top half of the wall, after that we called it a day for day one.
The next day I taped off the floors and the top of the Board & Batten wall and gave it two coats. BTW, I did test out a few paint samples, only because I wanted this color to be just right. I honestly could have gone a little lighter, but I do LOVE it! This whole project took two days, between two people. So if you know how to work a saw, caulking gun and a paint roller, you could totally do this!
Here are the paint colors we chose if you're interested in them. The top wall is Sherwin Williams "Alabaster" in an eggshell finish. The bottom of the Board & Batten is also Sherwin Williams "Universal Khaki" also in an eggshell finish. These two color compliment each other nicely. I also must say I love the creamy color Alabaster gives and I may paint a few more rooms in this color.
Well that wraps up our post on our Board & Batten walls. I love to hear from you, if you have questions, feedback or just to say hi! We've got one more post coming, all about the decorating and this will wrap up the dining room makeover series.
Thank you again for taking the time to read along with our dining room project.
Blessed be!
XOXO -Leigh