Hey guys! 🙋♀️ How’ve you all been? We’ve kept ourselves busy around here finishing up our projects we started during the summer. How are your Honey Do lists going? Did you get a lot accomplished during the summer months, or is the fall season your time to kick things into high gear and get’er done? We’ve been so excited to finally unveil my new master bedroom retreat with all of you! So today we have another little snippet of the room, to show you before the complete tour of the room. I’m gonna show you how easily you can install your own board and batten wall for only $50! 🙌 My Hubby and I had this beauty installed in just a day!
Before we installed the board and batten we opted to paint the walls first. We figured this would be easier than painting inside each of the frames created with the design. The room was previously painted in Smokey Slate by Behr (which I love) but we’d had it for 10 years and I was ready for a change. So my Mom came over to help paint the feature wall in Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore (which was color matched and mixed into a Behr gallon…I LOVE my Behr!) You can see that we tried a few different navy samples on the wall first before committing to “the” color. It felt pretty dark as we were applying the paint, but as it dried it is the perfect shade of navy! I can’t be more happy with it! I also painted the remaining walls in the room white to allow this accent wall to really be the feature in our room.
As you can see we weren’t too neat with our painting. We didn’t mask any of the walls or ceiling off. Since the design of the board and batten would go from wall to wall and floor to ceiling there was no need to cut in and paint a crisp line where these edges meet because they would be covered with the board. We did however paint the base board navy to include this as part of the entire feature wall. Since we have carpet in this space we were careful with this step. We first masked off the carpet with frog tape. Then bringing a dirty work blanket right up to that edge we covered the remaining carpet. This next little trick saved me so much grief of potentially getting paint on our carpet!
PRO TIP:
- First, take a long drywall taping knife and carefully slide it under the baseboard.
- Once you have the knife under the baseboard you can carefully begin to paint the bottom of the baseboard. Try to load your brush with as little paint as you can to prevent from any bleeding underneath the knife.
- Last, once your brush has been unloaded with paint, slowly drag your brush over the edge again to remove any excess paint that might bleed underneath. Then finish painting the base board.
This trick does take a little bit of time but it gives you some piece of mind that your flooring will stay clean!
Now we get to dig into the fun part! I’m a very visual person and it’s helpful for me to map things like this out. I simply took a piece of graph paper and mapped out the dimensions of our wall. I knew I wanted the boards to be 4″ wide so I cut several strips that would be equivalent to this measurement on my chart. Then I was able to move them around and play with the design of the wall before committing to anything. This was so helpful! First off because in my mind I thought I’d center the board and batten in the middle of the wall. Once I made a cutout of the dimensions of our headboard I could see that we actually needed to have the design of the wall pulled over to the right a little bit. The entrance to our room is to the left hand side of the wall and due to the walking space along the side of the bed, we’ve positioned the bed a little farther to the right on the wall to enable equal walking distance along each side of the bed. That was a really long way of saying that we decided to center the design of the wall on the center of our headboard. 😅
Off to Home Depot to buy supplies! I love getting down and dirty and being hands on in all of our DIY projects, but I usually do this kind of shopping with my Mom to make sure I’m actually buying the right supplies. 😁 So may I just say that I was pretty proud of myself for going to the store all by my lonesome, getting the supplies I needed, getting the boards cut to size, and transporting everything home! This may sound silly but this was a big step for me! 😜
As mentioned earlier each of the boards were to be 4″ wide. So I planned for purchasing a piece of MDF board that was 4’x8′. I grabbed the wood (with the help of a nice gentleman walking down the isle…because these things are heavy!) loaded it onto my cart and took it to the cutting station. There I had the Home Depot employee cut the board for me! Easy Peasy!
Easier said than done was actually getting all the supplies home! Along with the cut MDF strips, I purchased a 16′ primed baseboard for the top border of the design to avoid the need for having a seam in the wood. Now I always use our SUV like a truck and haul everything…but fitting a 16′ board inside was a bit tricky! (Luckily the baseboard was pliable so I was able to bend it down into the back of the SUV while letting the other end stick out the front passenger window a little. (Ok so it was about 16″ 😳. Don’t you worry. Another Home Depot employee was kind and grabbed some rope for me to tie it down to the mirror. And in small talk I mentioned that he’d probably seen people try to do crazier things…and he agreed! Maybe to make me feel better but it’s fine with me.) I loaded it all in and headed for home. But really…I’m sure he had a pretty good laugh on my behalf!
Really I’m just glad that the wood was pliable and that I didn’t break it bending it to fit in the SUV! Oh the things I do…the things I do!
Here I have a picture of the label on the MDF board so you can see what I purchased. The middle picture shows the strips all cut to size, and you can also see that they have a little bit of a rough edge. In the third picture you can see that I lightly sanded the edges just enough to remove any rough edges, but still leaving a nice square angle to the cut, not rounding the edges.
Here’s a list of the supplies we used to install the board and batten.
- Visual blueprint of design to guide us during installation
- Precut and lightly sanded boards (At this point each board was cut into 4″x8′ strips, cut at Home Depot.)
- Large and small level (A small one is fine, but a larger one is helpful for the vertical boards.)
- Pneumatic brad nail gun
- Box of 2″ brads
- Pencil. We also used a white pencil to mark on the dark navy wall.
- Speed square
- Measuring tape
- Tube of liquid nails adhesive
- Caulk
- Caulk gun
If you’d like to see this wall transformation take place from beginning to end, check out the video above! You will see this transformation in a sped up process as I guide you through each of the steps.
Step 1: The baseboard was measured and marked to the length of the wall, cut to size and installed first. We applied liquid nails to the backside of each board before nailing them into place. The baseboard was nailed into position at the top of the wall flush to the ceiling.
Step 2: Once the top border of the design was installed, we began to install all the vertical boards. We began on the right side of the wall. First hold the board to fit it into place, then take the board from the wall and lay on the floor to apply the liquid nails. Once the adhesive has been applied, place the board onto the wall in the designated place, use the level to make sure everything is aligned and level and secure with brads. This first board was installed to the far right of the wall, flush with the other wall.
Step 3: After the first board has been secured to the wall, take the measuring tape and mark where the next board will be installed on the wall. Be sure to mark the wall near the base board at the bottom and the top of the wall.
Repeat step 3 to install each vertical board. Carefully measure where the next board will be installed, mark the wall, fit it into place, lay the board on the floor to apply adhesive, fit it into place, make sure it’s level and secure with brads.
Step 4: Installing the lower horizontal row. Now, if you’ve done the math correctly, measured and installed the vertical boards really precisely, you’d think that each horizontal board would be the same measurement. In theory yes…but it’s always a good idea to measure each space before cutting each board due to slight variations in measurements.
To install the first horizontal row, measure up from the floor to where the bottom of the horizontal board will be. Place a mark on the wall on the inside of each of the vertical boards. Then measure the horizontal distance in the space and cut the board to fit. Repeat this step for all of the horizontal boards on the first row. We measured and cut all the horizontal boards at the same time. After each was cut, we labeled the backside with the measurement and a corresponding number to what row it would be installed in.
After the board has been fit to size, apply the adhesive and use the level to make sure it’s aligned in place, then secure with a couple of brads on each end.
Repeat step 4 to measure and cut the horizontal pieces for the upper row. To do this we measured down from the ceiling to the desired height and marked the wall in-between the vertical boards. Then we took horizontal measurements for each section and cut each board. We again labeled each board in case they were to get mixed up.
PRO TIP: It’s always a good idea to make sure the board fits in the space before applying the adhesive and sticking it to the wall. Some of the boards may need to be trimmed slightly even though they were measured and cut carefully.
Step 5: Putty in all of the nail holes and seams. The less putty you apply the easier the next step will be.
To apply, take a small amount of putty using a small putty knife and push the putty into the hole. Then holding the putty knife flush against the board, scrape off any excess putty. Once the putty has completely dried, take a palm sander and lightly sand each puttied spot to make sure it’s smooth and level with the board.
Step 6: Time to caulk! Eeek! We’re getting so close to the completed wall! (A little known fact about me: I like to caulk. I know that’s weird! I guess it’s because I’m a perfectionist and I like how neat and finished caulking makes any project come together.) Make sure to caulk around the inside of each of the shapes you’ve created with your design.
Step 7: Last but not least, it painting time! Now you get the satisfaction of painting all the board and batten your wall color. The easiest method for me is to take a paint brush and first paint over the caulk in a section, then I brushed the boards. I applied the paint with vertical brush strokes for the vertical boards, and horizontal strokes on the horizontal boards.
PRO TIP: To get an extra crisp and straight paint line at the top of the wall where it meets the ceiling, I used a little trick I talked about in another tutorial about painting perfect stripes. You can see what I’m talking about here. This trick is especially helpful when painting a line at the edge of the wall and a textured ceiling!
So really we could minimize the number of steps and say there are only 5.
1. Cut boards to size
2. Install boards
3. Putty holes
4. Calk
5. Paint
That’s it! The Easy Peasy way to install your own DIY Board and Batten wall for only $50!
Ta Da! The wall is finished! Now you can take a step back and enjoy your hard work! (This project actually comes together pretty quickly! I know there are a lot of steps, but it’s hard to describe how to do everything in any fewer steps. If you start with a good visual blueprint of your design and measure and mark as you work it goes pretty smoothly!) My Hubby and I had this installed start to finish in an afternoon. I actually spent more hours puttying in all the holes, sanding, caulking and painting to create the finished look.
If you look closely you can also see that we replaced the electrical outlets on this wall to a dark color. This helps it blend into the wall and not stand out on your beautiful feature wall. (We upgraded our outlets to include USB ports as well.)
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And as always here at Sunny Side Design
WE HOPE TO BRING YOUR HOME TO THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET!
You may also be interested to see how we gave this bed a Restoration Hardware finish for only $35!
Where did all the inspiration for this bedroom come from you may ask…take a little looksie at this post for A Vintage Chic Coastal Master Bedroom Mood Board.
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