Old English country cottages are one of my top favorite style homes. I love the romance of the trailing ivy and the mix of the rustic decor with the dark wooden antique furniture and the glamour of the golds and silvers. Board and Batten walls seem to be a staple in these homes. You always see it in one room or another.
I love the character it adds, so when deciding how to dress up our back room I decided a Board and Batten wall was the perfect choice. We have very high ceilings and the room is fairly large. The problem is that it doesn't have a purpose. To the left you can see the door going into the garage and to the right is the door going into the living room. What you don't see is that right beside the living room door is the door to our bedroom and to take this picture Im standing on the stairs which also connect to this room along with the laundry and guest half bath. YES, there are FIVE doors that come into this room along with the staircase. So as you can see, even though its a large room there isn't much wall space. I would like to call it a mudroom, but because of the way the garage door opens up into the room and how close the door openings are to the wall we couldn't add any large furniture pieces. So, we decided the Board and Batten wall was a perfect choice to brighten the space and add charm to an otherwise boring room.
We started off with a 1x6 for the topper and a 1x4 for the second horizontal topper and footer board. The wall was so long that we had to add additional pieces to create the length. We used 1x4's for all of the connecting vertical pieces. We have a mix of raw and primed wood as you can see in the picture. The prime wood was more expensive and we didn't think it really mattered, so we didn't do all of it in primed wood, but take my advice, choose the primed wood. It doesn't matter when you are building the wall, but we later found out that it makes a huge difference when it comes to painting.
(You can see our handsome Dobie boy in the photo, we love him and he's never far way. Im pretty sure he makes an appearance in every home post lol)
When you are cutting your boards for the vertical pieces, measure each individual board. Even though the second topper was level and nailed to the wall as well as the footer, we still found that the lengths varied slightly. When we were deciding on the distance between the vertical boards we just chose what looked best on our wall. We finished it off with a 1x2 I believe laid sideways at the top and a piece of molding to connect it and soften the look. Every inspiration wall we saw was different, but this look made it feel more connected with our style of home.
Adam can build and create, but I'm the painter of this duo. Together I think we make the best team. When we got the the painting part was when I realized how much easier it would have been had it all been primed wood. I could have painted the primed wood once maybe twice and been done, but it took three to four coats because of the raw wood. That doesn't include the crazy amount of caulking that took place. It was tedious because I had to paint the inner wall, the boards, and then cut in and around each several times, but in the end, it was DEFINITELY worth it. I didn't mind the extra painting, but if thats something you care about go with the primed wood. We used Behr "Papier Blanc" for the wall to match the trim in the room. Overall, building the wall was quick and easily done in a weekend. The painting took me several days, but I only did a little each day to spread it out. I think this could easily be started and completely finished in three days. The perfect long weekend project.
Thanks for following along with our Marion home makeover! I have so much fun sharing! Feel free to check out my lifestyle blog or follow along on instagram.