Monday, January 10, 2011

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

I linked up to these parties!

WhisperWood Cottage

Today's Creative Blog

Also linked up to:


The DIY Show Off




13 comments:

  1. Thanks Ronda, I really appreciate that! :)

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  2. the sconces are a nice touch!

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  3. Thanks Karen. I have my mom and her great taste - and obsession with QVC ;) - to thank for the sconces!

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  4. It's gorgeous! A mirror will be perfect there! Thanks for linking up at WWC!!

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  5. Go for it Minket! I bet you'll LOVE it!

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  6. How far apart are the vertical battens? Also what is the height of the top piece? Love the results.

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  7. The vertical battens are 16 inches apart - the wall was exactly 74 inches wide and I used 5 vertical batten strips which were 2 inches each. So after doing the math so they'd be evenly spaced apart, 16 inches distance between each was the magic number.

    The height of the top piece is a combined 8 and 3/4 inches. It's two pieces of moulding (window casing which is 3 and 1/4" and a plain SFS piece measuring 5 and 1/2"). As for the total height of where the whole thing measures between floor and ceiling, it's exactly 5 feet.

    Hope that answers your questions and thanks for the love! :)

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  8. Thanks. Just what I needed to know. I'm going to give it a try.

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  9. Sweet! Let me know how it turns out - I'd love to see pictures!

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  10. Hello Amy,

    you did a GREAT job! What color paint did you use for the top and the bottom and what brand.

    Thanks so much for sharing!

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  11. Hi Cindy - thanks! I used Ace brand paint in the color Cocoa Beach for the top and for the battens on the bottom I used Olympic's off-the-shelf white in semi-gloss.

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