Board And Batten Tutorial

by Myra on March 16, 2011

I’m so thrilled to f-i-n-a-l-l-y be sharing our board and batten treatment with you! It’s taken forevah to get it done so I could show you. Other projects have taken top priority. A board and batten wall treatment is a quite simple, yet complex {read: time consuming} process. If you’re looking to add architectural interest and detail to your home, board and batten might just be the thing for you.

For our little cottagey casa, board and batten is perfect. Our walls are 60 year old plastered textured dry wall. The texture isn’t a nice texture…it’s old, cracking and hideous. So instead of being able to cut corners like many AMAZING home bloggers, we did it the hard way and installed both our boards and our battens.

The difference that board and batten has made in our home is absolutely stunning.

Before – when we lived here four years ago as newlyweds

During – when we moved in the board and batten was primed.

Just FYI, the paint looks incredibly gray in this picture that I took when snow as on the ground. It’s the exact same paint color that’s in the next picture. Crazy!

Today – I’m in LOVE!

This board and batten tutorial post is long, but hopefully easy to understand. We didn’t do everything right or the easiest way, so I’ll share some tips for you along the way.

After removing the baseboards, we painted the walls Sherwin Williams Ramie. Looking back, we could’ve saved time by painting the upper half of the walls {duh!}…but we’re learning as we go.

We bought 1/4″ luan at Lowe’s to install as the “boards” to cover the ugly, old textured walls. We also purchased a ledge type trim to use above the luan.

Then we used liquid nails and paneling nails to attach the luan to the walls.

My hubs used the jigsaw to cut out around outlets and light switches.

After we reinstalled the baseboards and nailed up the ledge trim, I used floral tape {it was the only thing I had on hand} to mark out where the battens would go. I wanted to get them equally spaced, but also I needed to know exactly how many lattice boards I needed from Lowe’s.

We angled the lower edge of the battens, so they would look nice against the baseboards. I learned this trick from Kimba’s board and batten tutorial!

We used a spacer and level to make sure that the battens were equally spaced apart and exactly vertical. My hubs is an engineer…aka…math geek. In a few places, we centered the battens and equally spaced them instead of making them exactly equal all the way around the entire room. Just use good judgment to see what will look the best.

For example…

We used liquid nails and paneling nails for the battens as well. We don’t have a nail gun, so we nailed in each one and then set them. It was time consuming work. We hooked a few family members into helping us out with setting nails and caulking.

My brother and I sanded the caulked places, then I primed the board and batten with Zinsser primer. I didn’t know this at the time, but Zinsser primer is available in Zero VOC. Holla!

{swoon}

It’s starting to look so much better!!

I painted the board and batten with Olympic Zero VOC Ultra White in Satin. I love Zero VOC paint! My roller made the paint bubble. I have no idea why this is. Anyone know? I’ve used both foam rollers and nappy rollers and both of them make bubbles in the paint. I can’t stand it so I just used my Purdy paintbrush on the board and batten.

Beautimous!

My husband and brother-in-law installed the crown molding with a nail gun. Can I just say that I’m in love with that thing? Amazing!

Here’s how it looks now. I still have a bit of touch up work to do and maybe, just maybe, I’ll add another coat of paint on the board and batten. We’re also going to add quarter round trim to finish off the baseboards.

Whew! We made it. I admire you if you’re still reading this long post! If we can successfully do a board and batten wall treatment, then you can too!!

Have a fabulous day y’all!