Lil’ Board + Batten Feature Wall

Tbh I hope this doesn’t go viral because I don’t wanna deal w the mans telling me I’m doing something wrong

But for my friends who are also not skilled tradesmen and want to do something like this, it honestly wasn’t that hard (I do have ADHD and have done it once before the absolute hard way lmao)

We closed in an old closet on this wall, so this serves the purpose of being a nice feature wall while also breaking up our shitty drywall job.

This board and batten calculator is going to make the difference on whether this takes you 3 days or 2 hours

1. Paint the wall first. The first time we did this we didn’t and it’s HORRIBLE. Cutting in every piece of trim, just no.
2. I also prepainted all my boards (don’t forget the edges lol)
3. I cut them all to 4ft so I didn’t have waste w my 8ft boards (measure both pieces, don’t just cut it in half… also always cut on the same size of the blade, your saw blade thickness is not 0). Factoring in both my thicker pieces for top and bottom gave me a decent height
4. The calculator will tell you where each of your boards or battens go across the wall based on the size of your wall and the battens you choose (I used the 2.5” value trim packs of baseboard from Home Depot for the vertical, and the 3.5” for the horizontal)
5. I did the baseboard first, then worked from the doorway towards the wall
6. Steve taught me how to use the nail gun which is very satisfying, I measured the distance (16” for my 11ft wall), nailed the top of the board in place, and used a level before nailing the bottom of the board because I am a hard leaner and cannot make a straight line for shit
7. I put the top board on last, this way I wasn’t trying to jam my battens in if any of my cuts were off… I maybe would’ve done this the other way around so I was butting against that vs the baseboard no one sees.. but there aren’t any huge gaps so whatever it’s fine

For the horizontal pieces because my wall is 11ft and the boards are only 8, I obviously needed them to join at some point so we put that seam closer to the corner of the wall where it wasn’t walked past as much – so slightly less noticeable. This guys video was great – link

You want the seam at a stud, which worked out almost perfect for us to use a full 8ft and second 3ft piece. We (Steve) did a 45° cut for a cleaner seam.

You could fill all these holes and the gap between the battens and board now with filler and touch up with paint, I probably won’t because I have ADHD and am onto the next thing

Also because I’ll get asked – it’s Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore!

Bedding etc linked here!

If you’re more visual, there’s a Reel to give you an idea of everything I’m talking about!