Be Our Guest

Since we’ve moved in, our guest room has been the bane of my existence. The day we moved, we bought a mattress and a bed frame off of Wayfair that would get to us the next day (because we had guests immediately). From there, all we’ve done is throw our Peloton and a television in there, added some nice bedding, haphazardly hung some art, and called it a day. It’s visible to us every day from our hallway but honestly, I was just stuck on what to do. The layout is a bit odd with some really big windows and an unusable wall where the door opens and the closet doors are. And, we were trying to use this as a duel purpose room (our guest room and a workout space). I’ve changed the layout of this room roughly 47 times. All this to say, it wasn’t working.

Finally, I started to spend some time on this room. Once we had our hardwoods installed and our baseboards replaced, there was nothing left in my way. We had already mounted our tv, and now have a couple giant holes in the wall for the cords, so I was stuck with that, but also, we have this wide back wall that is visible from the hallway and is the perfect place for a bed to sit - so I knew I wanted that wall to be eye catching.

Board & Batten How To

Board and Batten was the gateway drug into DIY for me. When we first moved in, I paid a finish carpenter a small fortune to put this up in our bedroom - the whole time feeling pretty frustrated because it seemed easy enough - but I had never used a saw, but I never used a nail gun, but, but, but…

The design I initially fell for was the design I ended up with in this guest room - modern, straight-lined boxes with no frills. I searched for a long time on alternatives (did prefab boxes like these exist? could I use picture frames?) anything to get me out of my biggest blocker (having to cut wood with a saw). Unfortunately, nothing like that existed, so I sucked it up and figured it out (not without my first board and batten experience 100% cut by Home Depot). I made it happen and you can too. Here’s the step by step guide on what I did.

Supplies

• Wood or MDF boards (my go to). The options are endless here, but typically, board and batten is straight lines with perhaps a smaller trim piece to accent if you want something a bit more traditional. Think about the width of the boards that will make a big impact on the end look. I prefer MDF over Poplar or similar because it’s incredibly light, cuts like a dream, and is already primed. Also, if you do use Poplar - note that poplar cannot be stained, only painted.

• A miter saw (here’s the one I have)

• A speed square for drawing a straight line on your wood before your cuts (I prefer the metal ones)

• A level or laser level (like this one)

• A nail gun (my favorite) and 2” nails

• A tape measure

• Caulk & a caulking gun (make sure you get a drip-free version)

• Wood Filler (like this)

• Medium grit sandpaper

• Paint in whatever color you’d like!

Plan your design

Do you want vertical boards? Do you want horizontal? Do you want squares? Do you want a chair rail? Get some inspiration and figure out your design first and foremost. I typically stick with a light sketch here to help figure out what will work.

There are also tools that will help you determine how much material you’ll need to accomplish this. Check out this Board & Batten Wall Calculator as a start! The basic calculation here is:

(wall width - total width of all battens) / # of desired sections

Confirm that the thickness of the top of your baseboards/bottom of any crown molding will match your battens. If it doesn’t you can either replace the trim first, or use a quarter round molding that is the proper thickness and install on top of your baseboards first. Ultimately, you don’t want anything hanging way over or way under the existing thickness.

Get to work

I like to start with a horizontal top piece first, then measure the distance between the top batten and the baseboard at each point where you will install a vertical batten.

Measure the length, and cut your board to size - I rely on a speed square to keep things as accurate as possible.

A lot of tutorials out there will tell you to use wood glue here as well as nails. Here’s the thing - wood glue destroys your walls. Look past Oslo below and you’ll see what taking down the boxed moulding in my hallway did to the walls due to wood glue. And these boards aren’t going anywhere. With nails, caulk, and paint they are on for good.

Once you have that one up, you can create a frame, straight vertical lines, or boxes below. Next up is vertical battens. Using the spacing calculation above, measure and install your vertical battens. You can leave the vertical which is a very standard look, or add more horizontal battens to create squares.

Finally, fill all the nail holes with wood filler and caulk all the seams. Then, you’re ready to paint!

Would you try this square board and batten look??