BOARD & BATTEN ACCENT WALL
Board & Batten Wall
I am so excited to share how we added board and batten to our forma dining area. Overall, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. We used MDF to save on cost and made the rough cuts at Home Depot & the more accurate cuts once we got accurate measurements at home. If you don’t have a saw at home, make sure to make exact measurements at home prior to cutting at Home Depot. It’s safer the get it a tad longer, because you sand down the sides and make it more of a snug fit. We chose MDF because we didn’t want to rip out and replace our baseboards and it was overall cheaper. The MDF comes in different sizes, I didn’t want them to be too big, so we went with the smaller sizes.
The whole process from start to finish took us about 2 days. We picked up the supplies at Home Depot on Saturday, and finished all the touch up painting by Monday. On Saturday we nailed in the battens, did the caulking, spackling, and sanding. Then we did 2 coats of paint Saturday afternoon/night. Then we finished touch ups Sunday.
What you’ll need:
Depending on your wall size
- 3.5” x 192” x .68” (3) of Primed MDF casing, cut into 4′ long pieces (for the batten and horizontal piece at the bottom.)
- For the top Horizontal piece, we used a slightly wider piece about 4.5”.
- Brad nailer (I highly recommend using one of these. The nail holes were tiny, which made the spackling process a lot easier. The one we used is the Dewalt 18-Gauge Brad Nailer from Home Depot.)
- Level
- Measuring tape
- Painter’s tape
- Paintable caulk
- Spackling paste
- Sanding block
- Paint (We used Green by Behr in an eggshell finish.)
- Paint brush
- Paint sprayer
Steps:
Step One– Add the moulding and top ledge
Using the brad nailer, install the top MDF board horizontal at the height you’re wanting, we did about 4’. We used the brad nailer for this, no glue, and found it to work very well. If you choose to add mounding, we did not, then add that step next.
Moulding options at Home Depot.
Step Two- Install the board and batten.
Once we had the MDF cut into the size we wanted, we decided where we wanted them to go on the wall, working around outlets. Using the measuring tape, a level and a pencil, we marked where we wanted each piece of batten to go. Then you can use painter’s tape to hold the boards in place until you’re ready to nail them in, but our batten fit pretty snug, so it wasn’t necessary. Since our wall was on the smaller side we tried to find a distance between each batten that worked and didn’t make it look too crammed.
When you’re ready, nail the MDF to the wall using the brad nailer.
Step three – Caulk edges and spackle nail holes
You are going to want to caulk every edge where the boards meet the wall. Then, use spackling paste, which is pink but dries white to fill in the nail holes and seams between the boards. Once the spackle is dry, sand until smooth. I had to spackle twice on some holes because when I sanded it, it partially fell out.
Step four – Paint
At this point there will be a lot of dust from sanding. I wiped everything down with a damp rag and made sure to vacuum all the dust from the sanding. Then I started to paint with our original color, which was too yellow, so I went back to Home Depot and bought the green. We actually bought a paint gun and used that to give the wall a nice smoothed finish and it took like 5 minutes to paint the wall. It’s not a necessity but worth it.
Cost (this will vary depending on how big a space you’re doing and what materials you have on hand)
For us our Total = $120 roughly.
Check out the IGTV Video of the process
Finding my Essence 