The Adored Abode

This past winter we added a simple board and batten wall treatment to the hallway where you enter from the garage into the kitchen. We previously had a shoe cabinet and a store bought wall hook. This set up worked just fine, except for one thing. The hallway is pretty tight and the walls kept getting all dinged and scratched!

I repainted this hallway (especially below the coat hook) 3 times before I had enough. The problem with wall paint is it is typically flat or eggshell, which both have a tendency to scratch easily. I had the idea to do a board and batten wall treatment because then I could paint the entire section of wall with the board and batten treatment in a trim paint, which is much more durable and would hopefully not scratch as easily! Something that is both pretty and functional is a win in my book. Plus I love wall treatment and think they can add so much interest to a space.

This DIY is really very easy! You will need a few tools (a saw and a nail gun), but the other materials are pretty minimal. We knocked this whole area out in a weekend, including paint.

DISCLOSURE

The Supplies & Planning

I am going to preface this with these are not the exact materials we used – we had a lot of extra MDF on hand from a previous project and in an effort to not buy/not waste we decided to rip the MDF down to the desired sizes we wanted for the vertical slats rather than using pre-primed lattice strips. I would not suggest doing this the way we did. It caused a lot more work and MDF does not rip down very nicely as the edges of the strips were a bit rough and required a lot of sanding. Definitely go the pre-primed, pre-cut boards if you can!

• nail gun
• mitre saw or circular saw (or you could have your cuts made in store if you know the exact lengths you need)
• pre-primed lattice strips
• 1×3 boards for top rail
• caulk
• wood filler
• paint (we used Simply White – same as the rest of our trim)
• primer (if you don’t buy pre-primed boards)

You will need to measure out the total length of the top rail you will need (goes along the entire top portion of the batten treatment) and measure the length and total number of vertical slats you will need. We decided to space our vertical slats 11 inches apart (to match the board and batten on the exterior of our house) and ended up with 8 vertical slats total.

Note: We also decided to do a bottom rail board above our baseboard trim since the MDF we used was 1/2 inch thick and did not meet up nicely with our baseboards and we decided to “float” the board and batten above the trim. If you use the lattice strips as suggested above you would probably not need to do this. If you need a bottom rail like we used you will need the same total length as your top rail, but I would do the same width of board as used for the vertical slats so it is skinnier and does not attract as much attention.

The Process

We first measured, cut, and installed the top rail of the board and batten. Using a finish nail every 10 inches or so. This was definitely the easiest part. Just make sure everything is level as you go and if you have many doorways in the space you are doing like we did make sure that the boards are not only level, but also meet up visually on either side of the doorway! We decided to do the treatment 3/4 of the way up the wall, so our top rail sits at 6 feet up from the ground.

Then we measured, cut, and installed the bottom rail, using the same technique as used for the top rail. We chose to float our bottom rail 1.5 inches above our trim piece.

After the bottom rail was installed we measured, cut, and installed each of the vertical slats. We used 3-4 finish nails per vertical slat to ensure they were snug to the wall. We made sure the spacing was even and the slats were level vertically as we went.

Next came caulking all of the seams (don’t skip any – they will stick out after you paint!) and filling all of the nail holes.

After everything was caulked and filled we primed everything, including the spaces between the vertical slats for good measure. We finished with 2 coats of paint. I decided to repaint the door leading to the garage from black to white while I was at it so everything in this hall felt more cohesive and I repainted the wall above the board an batten (Benjamin Moore Classic Gray) since I had to patch a couple of areas and wanted everything to be fresh!

The Final Result

We are so happy with the final result! We added these awesome modern wooden wall hooks (spaced between each vertical slat) to add back the functionality of the coat rack we previously had. We decided not to add back shoe storage here for now, but we may down the road.

I think this look really opens up this tight hallway and makes it so much more functional for us. It’s been 3 months since we finished it and everything has held up really well, there are very minimal scratches and dings on the walls thanks to the more durable trim paint – which makes me so happy!

Since we have paneled walls in the living room as well we wanted this board and batten treatment to flow with our living room, but not necessarily match it exactly.

The board and batten treatment is much more casual than the traditional trim paneling in our living room. We have talked about adding a bit more detail to the board and batten (maybe cove molding pieces outlining each of the batten pieces and a trim board along the top) to dress it up a little bit more and tone down the modern feel it currently has, but we like how it is now so we will see if that actually happens!

Overall we are so happy with how this easy DIY turned out!