I bought a new house with the plan to become a single mom by choice. Before I start with the getting pregnant process I wanted to try a fun wall treatment in the room that I hope to be the nursery. After reading lots of blogs on pinterest, I decided board and batten was the way to go. Keep in mind I did this entire project by myself. I never had an extra set of hands to help so don't be afraid to tackle this one on your own! Girl power!
Supplies/Prep:
- Air compressor and nail gun - trust me - you want a nail gun! I bought them together in a starter set. Don't forget to purchase brad nails for the gun - the set comes with some, but I needed another package
- Miter Saw - I'm a DeWalt fan and have the DW713. You can find it here. It's very easy to use.
- Caulking and caulk gun
- Paint
- Measure all of your walls and decide how far apart you want your vertical boards to be. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted but knew somewhere between 12-18 inches would be perfect. Figure out how many vertical boards you will need for each wall. Keep in mind you want to avoid any plugs for simplicity's sake.
- I did not use flat boards behind the vertical strips which would have made it true board and batten. The texture isn't too deep on my walls and I didn't care that it wouldn't be completely smooth.
- Decide the height you want your chair rail. Measure the distance between the bottom of the chair rail and your baseboard. That is the length you will want your vertical boards to be cut.
- I used lattice boards for the vertical boards - they were the perfect width and the cheapest thing available at the hardware store. I had the store cut ALL of my vertical boards to the correct length. Keep in mind, your boards will be close in length but off by up to .25 inches. I'm a perfectionist but decided this route was much better than me cutting each board individually. Plus, it made it easy to put everything in my car!
- I used 3 inch molding for the chair rail. I debated putting a ledge on the top of the rail but decided against it.
Get to work!
- I had to decide exactly how far apart to put my vertical boards so I laid them out on the wall in varying distances. 15 inches turned out just perfect to avoid all of my outlets and work well with the corners. Keep in mind that the actual distance between the sides of the boards is actually less than the measurement if you take into account the width of the boards. Cut a piece of scrape wood to the correct measurement and use it as a spacer.
- Because I was working alone, I put up the vertical boards first. I used the spacer I made to place the bottom of the board and a level to make sure it was straight up. A 3-4 nails in each board is all you need. Because the windows are opposite of the door I started the vertical boards there to make sure they were centered on the windows. I put 4-5 nails in each board.
- Once the vertical boards are up it's time to do the chair rail. The vertical boards make this super easy - just put the chair rail on top and the level on top of the chair rail boards. Start nailing away. You will need to make mitered cuts in the corners, if you aren't sure how to do that I suggest a little research - it was my first time mitering and it was fairly simple. I do have to angles in this room that were tricky and took some trial and error.
- The process that takes the longest is caulking and puttying. I put putty over all of the nail holes and caulked all the edges of the vertical boards and chair rail. Don't skip this step- it gives the whole room the finished look.
- I painted the gray first and then the white. In hindsight, paint the lighter color first!
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