At last, it is done.  Oh my word I am so loving this wall treatment in my little boy’s room!  I’ve always loved the paint color (Valspar’s ‘La Fonda Villa Fountain’), yet somehow this wall treatment not only mellows all the intense teal blue but also provides such beautiful contrast.  Heart!

I know there are so many ‘how to’ tutorials in blog land about board and batten, and truly they are all worth reading.  Everyone has a different approach.  I installed this same wall treatment last month in my friend Mia’s loft, and finally had the opportunity to install board and batten around an entire bedroom in our house.

Pay no attention to the variance in color from scene to scene you’re about to see.  These pictures were taken in the brightest morning light and under the dimmest incandescent light over the course of several weeks ~ basically whenever I could get around to working on this project.  Want to know how we did it?  I’ll tell ya!

Obviously we started with a blank wall like this:

Midway through the madness the room looked like this:

Then we got it closer to this:

And now this:

Ack, what the heck?

This is the section under the window, but (duh) I never captured it at any other angle.  You’ll have to wait for the room reveal to see this wall, but I have more ‘final’ pics of the other walls at the end, just scroll down.  But first, the play by play.

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Jennifer from I Heart Organizing wrote to me today asking if the board and batten loft solution from Monday would work in her home on her ‘Problem Wall’.  Jennifer wrote:

“I would love to do this project right in between our front door and large picture window in our living room/entry.  It almost looks to be a similar situation to the room you worked on . . . I have always struggled with no coat closet in this room.  When I saw what you did, it seemed like a perfect solution!  Just wondering your thoughts.” 

So I got a little creative with her entry and decided with a little Photoshop ‘cut and paste’ she could visualize her improved foyer. 

Here is Jennifer’s ‘Problem Wall’ now:

And what it would look like after installing some simple board & batten.   

I hung her pictures a bit higher to accommodate for the ‘new’ wall treatment.   Since Jennifer is a busy mom of three boys, those extra hooks will come in handy.  She could use some extra storage, but there’s no need to make it drab or expensive, so I added this upholstered bench. 

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Board and batten is all the rage in DIY land, and for very good reason.  It’s a fantastic way to add architectural interest to your home and a project any homeowner can tackle.  Board and batten adds clean lines, breaks up bare walls, and complements many styles of modern homes, and these days it’s de rigueur to install it yourself, and then blog about it. 

I call my project basic board and batten because for me it was extremely simple to install, but that was because I had no corners to deal with, no strange angles to cut or windows to work around.  Just a simple light switch to accommodate along a straight wall. We did a full room of board and batten, you can read about that here.

I’m going to install this same board and batten treatment in my son’s room, and in that space, I will run into all those issues named above, so I’ll be sure to do a follow up post addressing those more difficult cuts and installation when I tackle that project later this year.

For yesterday’s before and after project, I had the four supplies I needed to whip up this wall treatment rather quickly:  1) pre-primed MDF, 2) a compound miter saw, 3) a fast brad nailer/compressor, and 4) a handy husband helping me cut and nail boards on his extended lunch hour.  

Installing Simple Board & Batten

My Supplies:  4 x 8” panel (1/8 inch thick);  ½ x 3 ½” pre primed MDF boards for base and top; ¼ x 2 ¼ pre primed MDF boards for battens; ¼ x 2 ¼ strip for ledge; 11/16” cove molding; jigsaw; compound miter saw; brad nailer; Gorilla glue; spackle, caulk. 

1) Remove your existing baseboards if their thickness will not accommodate the bottom of your battens (the vertical strips).  Most existing baseboards will not allow for the battens to sit on top, which is why I replaced it (see below). We talk about cutting and reusing baseboards for board and batten in this post.

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