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Afternoon Board and Batten

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One of the projects that has been on my master house list has finally been crossed off!

I have been wanting to do some kind of entry way project where our side door comes in since we moved in.

Originally I was thinking wainscoting with a shelf and hooks, but it was about $35 dollars per piece and I wanted it tall so I would probably need about 3 pieces, a shelf, moulding, hooks etc. I didn’t think it needed to be that expensive.

So perusing around I found board and batten. It looked easy, and by using MDF boards instead of pine it was even cheaper!

Here is our wall before.

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Pretty boring right?

Like I said before I used MDF instead of pine because it’s cheaper, already primed and no knots!

Steps:

1. Measure to see how many actual boards you will need.

I decided to use 1×4’s for the framing and the top ledge, and 1×3’s for the the batten.

We also used a piece of cove moulding for underneath the ledge just to finish it off.

2. Once we purchased all of the boards we first attached the top board at our desired height. We used liquid nails to attach them to the wall and then secured them with a nail gun on the studs. We continued to measure, cut and attach the rest of the pieces. We went in order of the top, base, sides, batten, the pieces that went in between the batten and the ledge and finally the moulding.

3. I suggest you lay out the batten before you attach to make sure you don’t hit an outlet or switch.

Once everything is up…

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Now time to caulk, and caulk and caulk some more…

Board and Batten caulking

When everything is dry, paint! I was thankful that the MDF was already primed so I just went ahead and painted without priming since the wall color was light enough. I did 2 coats of paint.

I knew I wanted hooks so I found some at Hobby Lobby for half off for the lower portion, but I did not find hooks for the top. But I think I might leave it like this. Not sure yet.

I finished it off with some fun wall art and I’m very happy with the way it turned out! What do you think?

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Krissy

Monday 14th of December 2015

Love board and batten! We have a small little entry way and I don't know that it would look right, but this is lovely!

Lynn

Sunday 15th of February 2015

Love this! I was looking for something like this for our laundry/mudroom. Thank you!

Dee

Saturday 10th of January 2015

I love this. I have a long hallway that is begging for this treatment. I am assuming that you bought your wood precut? or did you buy one large MDF board and have it cut to size?

Beautiful job.

Kate_H

Saturday 10th of January 2015

Wow, this looks great!

I'm totally going to steal it as we have a long hallway which is about 80-100 cms wide and we were wondering what to do with it to break up the blank walls either side.

This would be perfect along one wall and have the added bonus of somewhere to hand coats etc.

Thank you for sharing it with us.

Marilyn

Saturday 10th of January 2015

Very nice! Great way to add a finishing touch to a wall.

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