Part 1 – Board & Batten

Happy Tuesday! I’m just waiting to see if Atlanta is going to close today due to snow. Yes, the entire city will close because of snow. Do you remember Snowmageddon 2014? We sure do, so now we just shut it down! Anyway, enough snow talk.

I’m super excited to share a glimpse of the board & batten we installed in our living room. It’s not even done, and I already love it. Before I show you anything, I want to remind you what this space looked like during the holidays.

After the holidays, I moved some items around. Classic me! I wanted to protect the beautiful bin table from my cats. They thought it made the perfect perch. Not so much…

Even before I moved the furniture around, I knew this wall needed trim. I wanted more character. I also wanted to lighten this space up a bit without changing my favorite gray paint. Board and batten was the perfect solution.

My very first step was priming the wall. I used a pencil to mark where my priming should end. I subtracted two inches from my final height and marked accordingly.

After that was complete, it was time to install the many pieces of trim. I’ll provide a link to a helpful tutorial below.

Once the trim was up, I filled each hole with drywall compound. A quick sanding, some caulk, and paint will finish it up. I’ll share the final result in the next week or so. Doesn’t it look great already? It makes such a difference.

Before I go, I want to share some helpful information for those of you wanting to create a similar look in your home. There are so many great tutorials out there already, and I didn’t feel I needed to recreate a post. I’d rather just share the two great tutorials that I referenced for our project. I’ll also share how our project differs in a moment. If you’re looking for a step by step tutorial, I highly recommend visiting Young House Love. It’s just a great blog to visit anyway. If you need help calculating your spacing, I liked the way Liz broke it down on Love Grows Wild. So how did ours differ?

Our wall features two giant return vents. Fun! They actually don’t bother me, but they did require some additional planning. We had to use a really thin piece between the primed 1×4 and baseboards. Composite lattice was the perfect solution, and you can find it at Home Depot. In order to use a 1×4 board for the top, we had to install backband moulding around the doors. Backband is thicker than your standard door trim. You’ll have an overhang if you install a 1×4 board against a normal piece of door trim. I hope that makes sense. We didn’t bother with the front door, because we need to replace all of the trim around it anyway.

The only other difference was regarding the spacing calculation. I wanted to make sure none of the lattice ran into the outlet. I also wanted to cover a weird circle. I’m assuming the previous owners unsuccessfully patched a hole. Doesn’t matter…cause you can’t see it now! Like others, our walls are pretty smooth. We didn’t feel the need to install panels over the drywall. We also opted to utilize our baseboards for consistency.

I’m so excited to get this project completed, but it will have to wait a bit longer. My birthday is next week so we’re headed to sunny Florida. Don’t worry, I’ll share pictures of that too. Have a great week!

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