Board and Batten Reveal

Board and Batten Reveal

Board and batten is a great way to add character to your home, and it also has the added benefit of easy fingerprint clean-up if you have kids. I love it to this day, and I think it just makes everything look crisp and custom.

I gave you a preview to the late night insanity in starting our board and batten project just two days before Christmas. Well, we have one project that is done. The hallway as you enter our house from the garage was every mother’s nightmare. It was painted in flat paint. Flat paint. Who paints walls in flat paint?!? Perhaps someone with no children…

So, since this hallway is a magnet for fingerprints and scuff marks, I figured it would be a good place to start our board and batten journey. Mind you, we decided to take the red-eye on this trip and started working on it at about 11:30 PM on December 23rd. Yes, insanity rules.

Here is the photo montage – sorry for the before pictures – I was in a hurry to capture a few since I don’t typically take pictures of hallways just for kicks.

Kind of a before picture – I was actually taking a picture of my new rug. Isn’t it pretty?

A picture from the opposite direction – at the beginning of the insanity.

The hubby measuring out the distance between the boards with a trusty paint stick!

AFTER – A crisp and clean space.

AFTER – View from the garage door

Another view – added another piece at the top to give it a more finished look

And another view in case you haven’t seen enough

Our hallway has gone through a few more makeovers as the years have gone by, but the board and batten has stayed the same. I still love it!

And here it is now –

Material Details

I have received a lot of questions about the board sizes and the measurements I used. Here are the details:

• Vertical boards: 1 x 2 1/2″ mdf
• Large horizontal board: 1 x 7 1/2″ mdf
• Top “trim” pies 1 x 1/2″ mdc

Additional tools needed:

The spacing in between the boards was about 12 inches. We used a paint stick as a guide. You’ll want to measure your wall to make sure that the boards are able to be evenly spaced, and reflective of one another so that it is aesthetically pleasing.

TIP: Cut the bottom of your vertical boards at an angle so that they “taper” towards the trim (assuming you’re not going to replace your baseboards). That really helps give it a more seamless look overall.

As for the height, that’s a matter of personal preference. Ours are about 65″ high, from the floor to the top of the trim piece. But, you can eyeball it and see what works best for your space. We have 9′ ceilings , so that height worked best for us.

We caulked around all of the mdf pieces and the paint that we used was an antique white (Porter Paints) in a latex semi-gloss that matched our trim paint.

Jenny

Original article and pictures take www.evolutionofstyleblog.com site