So, you’ve seen the whole board and batten trend take off the past year and have been dying to try it out yourself?! Well, consider this a sign that you NEED to do it now because it was such an easy diy and only cost me $80 to complete an 11ft wall! I need more house to do this project somewhere else guys! I’m so glad I just went with my gut and tried it because I honestly am in love with the update in Nora’s nursery. With the help of Roy (frankly, power tools and I don’t mix), this board and batten feature wall came together with the cutest pre-pasted wallpaper from Station D. Let me start with the before photos just so you can see how much it has changed the whole feel of the room.
B E F O R E
Nora’s nursery had a feature wall painted in Benjamin Moore’s Chippendale Rosetone. Don’t get me wrong, the colour is beautiful but I just wanted to break up the pink and wanted a bit of a change. So, after seeing all the board and batten diys I decided to give it a try. Keep in mind, I read some blogs, watched some videos and then mapped out my plan. For me, a good DIY always starts out with a vision board, or an idea of what you want the final product to look like. I visualized what the wall would look like and then started planning out the details.
What You’ll Need:
– Pre-primed MDF trim (these aren’t wood so it won’t break the bank). The sizes I used were:
1 x 2 – 12’ x (1) – for finishing off the top of the board and batten wall ledge
1 x 3 – 12’ x (1) for the bottom (board)
1 x 3 – 8’ x (4) for the in between pieces (batten)
1 x 4 – 12’ x (1) for the top piece (board)
– spackle for touching up the grooves
– paint (I used some leftover paint I had from the walls – Behr Eggshell in Nano White)
– paint brush and roller
Tools:
– level
– Brad nailer and nails (1 1/4) (borrowed from a friend)
– Compressor (if your nail gun needs one)
– Miter saw (see step 1 for details)*
– measuring tape
Before we start here’s a few things to note:
1. Start by measuring out the wall height and width so that you can plan out the look and figure out how many pieces you’ll need to purchase and cut down. I purchased my supplies at Home Depot and I asked them to cut the mdf trim in half so that they’d fit in my car and since we had a miter saw at home, I knew we could do the adjusting and cutting ourselves. If you’ve already measured and know what sizes you’ll need, you can get them to do it for you and you won’t need a miter saw.
2. Some people who have done this DIY have removed the existing baseboard and replaced it with an mdf trim but we decided to just keep it as is – it’s less permanent and wouldn’t be a hassle to put back later on since this is an older home as well, I didn’t want to risk finding out what’s underneath. You would need extra pieces for this and I would just duplicate the 1 x 4 – 12’ top piece.
3. To be honest, I found that the easiest way to do this was to cut the board and batten pieces in half which I had Home Depot do to put them in my car and use that as a working point for the whole measurement of the wall. I wanted the full look of the board and batten to be higher than halfway up the wall so I knew that the pieces all placed together would be at roughly 54.5″ from the top of the existing trim. If you’d like shorter, here’s where your measuring would come into play so that you can make sure that the pieces are cut by Home Depot or yourself to your liking. This DIY wasn’t hard because I had left the in between pieces where they were already cut.
I know video sometimes helps just to visualize things so here’s a Instagram ReelsInstagram Reels I made incase you want to see a quick bit of how this went.
Steps:
- Clean the walls! I took a damp rag and made sure it was clean of debris and dust.
- Determine the batten (vertical board) spacing – usually between 14″-20″ looks good in a space. Here’s the math we used:
8 batten boards x 2.5″ (actual width of 1 x 3 boards) = 20″
141.6″ (length of wall) – 20″ = 121.6″
121.6″ / 7 (the number of spaces between the 8 boards) = 17.37″ - We started to install the 1 x 3 – 12’ piece (that was cut in half) on top of the existing trim. We had to trim down the second piece since the wall isn’t quite 12 feet. These are your horizontal boards. Use the construction glue on the back of every piece (you don’t need much) and then use the brad nailer to place onto wall. It’s always nice to have a second set of hands to hold things in place.
- Install your top 1 x 4 – 12’ (horizontal board) piece (which was also cut in half for me, and then we used our miter saw to get the second piece the right length just like we did the bottom piece). Remember to measure up to the height you’d like your vertical boards to go and level this out. We did this because we knew our wall wasn’t going to be perfectly even. This would ensure that we would be level. We measured about 47” (our vertical boards were 48” which gave us an inch to adjust them into the wall).
- Mark on the wall exactly where your battens need to go based on the spacing you determined in step #2. Mark the length of each board needed to fit into your “frame” – top and bottom board and batten wall.
- Now, attach the battens (vertical boards) to the wall. Start by installing the starting and ending pieces on both corners of the wall with the construction glue and then the brad nailer. Make sure you’re using the level as you’re installing each piece
- Add the top 1 x 2 – 12’ board on top to create a ledge (also cut to fit the wall perfectly). Install with brad nailer and some construction glue.
- Fill nail holes with spackle and caulk the seams.
- Paint the board and batten wall with two coats of paint. In my case I also added pre-pasted wallpaper from Station D to finish off the look!
A F T E R
