Batten Down the Hatches!

Ahhhh board and batten...you sexy design style, you. I've dreampt of you in my upstairs hallway for quite awhile now. And you've finally become a dream come true! :)

I started with taking this bare, beige wall and I primed and painted the lower 3/4s of the wall. Sorry I didn't take a before pic of the bare expanse of the orginal wall
:( 

After priming and painting I measured, cut and taped up a piece of window casing. I used window casing as part of my moulding rather than a piece of chair rail or something similar since window casing has the kind of ledge I wanted to be able to lean pictures and other doo-dads on it :)

After making sure the moulding was level (see my cute little level on the ledge? :) ) I nailed in several 1-and-quarter inch nails about 12 inches apart.  Then, underneath the window casing piece, I measured, cut, and installed a 1x6 piece of MDF underneath to give it a chunky and more dramatic look:

I love its beautiful chunkiness! :) Next I measured, cut and put up my vertical battens. They're 1/4 x 2 inch slats of wood found at Lowe's in the same moulding aisle as the 1 x 6 piece and the window casing. For the height of these, although my horizontal pieces were level, it's an old house so my baseboard was a bit unlevel from years of the house settling since it was built in the 1940s. So each of my slats are a little different in length, but all within a quarter inch difference - nothing exteme. 

This is the only part of this project where I called on help from the hubs. We don't have a power saw so I was sawing the old-fashioned way! I got through most of the sawing before my honey came home from work; then I asked him to make the cuts on the last two or three vertical slats for me since my arm muscles were shot from all the other sawing I did, haha! He graciously obliged :) 

Here's what it looks like once I had the vertical slats nailed up and cauked:

It's coming together!!!! wooohoooo! :)

  The next thing I did was prime everything. My mdf pieces were pre-primed but I went over them with primer anyway, you know, for good measure :)  then I went over all the moulding pieces with seimi-gloss white and here she is, all done up and purty!  (and with a decorative touch above it too!)

Wanna see more? Ok!...

I can't wait to find and hang a big, beautiful, chunky, wood-framed round mirror in the center betweeen the two sconces - those are battery operated timer candles (perfect at night!) and were a Christmas present. They can be found on QVC's Website.

I'm soooooooooo happy with how this project turned out, and that I did it 99.9% all by myself!!! :) haha. So what do you think? Are you on the board and batten bandwagon? Do you prefer beadboard instead? Or nothing at all on a wall? -hey, that rhymed! :)   Do tell!!!!

~Amy

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