24 Hr Board & Batten Wall

Hi friends!  Happy Day 23049724937 of quarantine!!  I’ve been cranking out project after project in our new house (Squirrel Estate), and it’s so exciting to see my initial vision come to life.

Two months ago, I did a board & batten wall downstairs.  It made me so excited to bust out the nail gun and tackle another wall.  A few weeks ago, I chose our future guest room as the recipient.  Our guest room is a medium-sized room, approximately 14ft x 8 ft (including closet).  When thinking about designing the guest room, I took into consideration the window placement.  Originally, I wanted to have the bed butt up against the window.  But our window is long, so a good chunk of it would be covered by the bed.  I decided to anchor the bed to the long wall that you see when you first walk into the room.  Here is one angle of the room taken right after we closed.

So far, I painted all the walls and trim (that we kept), and replaced the flooring with LVP. After the board and batten was installed, I finished up the baseboard in the room.

I like to call this project the 24 Hr Board & Batten, because start to finish, you should be done within 24 hours (including wait time, snack time, playtime, etc.)  Actual hands-on time for this project is probably less than 3 hours, but there is a lot of waiting around for caulk & wood filler to dry, for the paint to dry, etc.

Alright, let’s get down to it.  This time, I chose to do a classic look where it looks like a bunch of rectangular boxes.  I chose to run mine pretty high (around 5’6″).  For reference, I have 8′ ceilings.  In my opinion, running the board and batten higher gives the illusion of a higher ceiling.  Also, I plan on doing wallpaper on top, and the wallpaper is expensive, so the less space there’s left, the less wallpaper I need (haha).

The process is really similar to how I did the grid pattern on the last wall, but to refresh, first, you’ll need to measure out the length of the wall you’re doing the board and batten.  For me, that was 12′.  Since my car can only fit up to 8′ length boards, I bought two 1x2x8 (ledge), 1x4x8 (top board right beneath the ledge), and 1x5x8 (baseboard), to cover all the boards I needed that run horizontally.  I then decided on how many battens (vertical pieces) I wanted.  I settled on 8, and I wanted them at 5′ length.  So I bought four 10′ long pieces and had the store cut them in half for me.

After I gathered all the wood and tools, it’s time to build this thing!

Supplies you’ll need:
– 1×4 (vertical battens & top board)
– 1×5 (baseboard)
– 1×2 (upper ledge)
– Stud finder
– Level
– Caulk
– Liquid Nails
– Caulk gun
– Putty knife
– Wood filler
– Sanding sponge
– Primer & paint

Tools you’ll need:
– Miter saw (or any other saw you have)
– Nail gun

I cut all the wood to the length I wanted, and then I attached the baseboard and the left-most and right-most battens on the wall.  I made sure to use a level to make sure everything is level.  I then calculated the space I needed between each vertical batten, and I nailed them in.  Since none of my vertical pieces (besides the outer edge ones) were hitting studs, I ran liquid nails along the back before attaching them to make sure they are really secure.  After nailing everything in, I attached the top horizontal board.  To finish off, I laid a piece of 1×2 on top as a little ledge.  Then it’s time to wood fill and caulk.  After I finished, I decided to call it a day to really allow everything to dry.  Although I didn’t have to go around any outlets, I did end up covering one no-longer-functional outlet box.  Since I was only covering approximately 90% of it, I had to patch it, and the patching compound typically takes way longer to dry than wood filler and caulk.

The next morning, I sanded everything down, vacuumed, and then got to painting.  Because I used actual wood instead of primed MDF, I needed to apply primer first to really hide all the imperfections in the wood.  After priming, I applied 2 coats of paint that I already had on hand.  The color I used was Benjamin Moore Newburyport Blue.  I’m not 100% convinced of this color, so somewhere down the line, I might change it.  But for now, it works.Overall, this was such a simple project, and has such a big impact to the house.  I love it.