Board and Batten Entry

Our first home was a great starter home. It was built by the owner in 1950, who used scrap pieces of wood here and there to put together a humble little home. At some point a remodel took place and it was difficult to tell what the original layout may have looked like before the second story was added on. As you could imagine, the flow was not great and there were many quirks throughout. However, it was our home. We were proud owners of that 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath home for five years. We remodeled the kitchen and bathrooms and added a great deck in the backyard, but one thing it was still missing was our family. There were ZERO photos on the wall. I knew that getting photos up on the walls was going to be a priority in our new home.

The board and batten feature in our entry way was one of the first projects I tackled in our new home. The space was long and relatively wide and COMPLETELY bare. When trying to explain to Chris exactly what I wanted to do, he had no idea what I was talking about. So, I took out some painters tape and put it up on the wall. I marked out where each batten would go, how tall they would be and even marked out where I wanted to put a shoe cabinet. At the time, we had no place to place our shoes, so we often found them in our baby’s mouth (*cringe). So shoe storage was a top priority for me!

The first step was to remove the trim from the wall. This is easily done by using a bow cutter to score the caulk above the trim (between the trim and the wall) and below the trim (between the trim and the tile). Then, use a pry bar to remove the trim. We talked about applying the batten straight on the walls but Chris did not like the idea of smooth batten against a high textured wall. So we decided to apply 1/4” plywood to the wall to create a smoother finish. Note: even after painting the plywood, you can still see the wood grain a bit, so if that’s something you can’t live with I would choose a different route. After applying and painting the plywood, I attached 1”x4” MDF horizontally to the bottom (floor molding) and top of the space making sure that they were level as I used a brad nailer to attach them to the wall. I also used liquid nails on the top board just in case I decide to add some hooks (for bags or jackets) later on to give it a little extra hold. I wasn’t worried about using liquid nails because even if I decide to take it down later, it will be easy since I put the plywood up on the wall - no damage to the drywall! Once the horizontal pieces were attached I measured the length for each batten. Theoretically they should all be the same if everything is square and level but this is the real world and NOTHING is ever perfectly square and level, especially if you don’t have a brand new home! Now, there are a lot of fancy sites and tools that you can use to determine the spacing of your batten. I took the time to measure and calculate on my own so that I could take into account the shoe cabinet I was adding and make sure that would align nicely with the spacing. I first determined where I wanted the cabinet to be (taking into account where the tile/carpet meet, where the electrical outlet was on the wall, etc.) and placed a batten in the center of that cabinet. I didn’t want the spacing to be wider than the cabinet and wanted the batten(s) to be centered on the cabinet. I could have made the spacing a little more narrow and had two battens centered on the cabinet but ultimately liked the spacing with just one in the middle. For me that equaled 21.5 inches apart. I used 1”x3” MDF for the batten and attached them to the wall with my brad nailer. I read many places that your wall treatment should be 2/3 the height of your wall. This was tricky for me as the wall goes up to the ceiling on the second floor. I decided to keep it at 5 feet for a couple reasons. First, I wanted to make sure it was tall enough to extend past the height of the shoe cabinet (50 inches). Second, I knew I wanted to put photos up on the wall above the board and batten and didn’t want anyone craning their neck to see the photos.

I painted everything a beautiful blue-ish green color using Glidden’s premium in the color Scarborough. I love the way the color changes throughout the day based on the light coming through our windows.

Initially I intended to create a photo “ledge” to top off the horizontal board on top of the batten. Once I purchased my frames I realized that they were too large to be left just leaning against the wall as they were prone to tipping. I still wanted something to complete the look of the accent wall and wanted to bring in some natural wood elements, so I went with 1”x4” select pine. This piece lays on it’s side across the plywood and horizontal board (which I used my brad nailer to attach it to). There is the perfect amount of overhang to be able to place seasonal items, such as garlands, without sticking out too far.

The last part of this project was hanging our family photos. I finished this project just in time for Halloween and needed to order prints anyway, so I went ahead and ordered some spooky photos to hang temporarily as Chris is a HUGE Halloween fan.

I absolutely love how this project turned out! I still catch myself looking at it regularly and thinking about how happy it makes me.