board + batten tut

Thought I'd show ya my board and batten entryway since the holidays are sneaking up on us & we'd like to start displaying goodies on that entryway shelf.  [Whew!..major run-on sentence!]

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Board + Batten:

It surprises me some people still aren't familiar with board & batten treatments & even confuse them with bead board.  It's a major trend here in AZ and esp all over blogville.  

It looked easy enough so we didn't follow a specific tut, just did our own version...that's the nice thing about B&B, you really can do whatever you'd like and it still looks fab!

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Let me show you what we did to give this rickety old house a fresh face lift for not a lot of dough!  

Pretty much I'm in camouflage mode with this house...there are so many deep rooted problems/updating needs that we decided to make it look pretty before we eventually get down to the nitty gritty.

Entryway BEFORE:

Here's the angle looking in from the kitchen.  I know, bad picture quality AND badly in need of decor help, eek!

Angle looking in from my craft room.  This room has blah tile and blah dingy paint on the walls.

How to apply board and batten:

a.  Top molding is about 5" thick, we placed it 41/2' up from the floor.

b.  The vertical slates are 11/2" thick and were placed every 16" apart.  

* A nail brad tacked all these babies securely to the wall.

...We're makin progress, yippee!...

c.  Caulk caulk and more caulk those stinkin little holes!

d. Prime. VERY IMPORTANT!

e. Paint bottom half & all molding white.

f.  Paint top half whatever color you prefer.

Entryway AFTER:

[I've made more progress on this room since this picture but what a difference right??]

Sure this tut makes board & batten sound really easy.  It's not a hard project, H-O-W-E-V-E-R, it IS tedious and very time consuming.  Weekend project?  Yes...IF YOU HAVE A BUDDY.  My hubby took pity on me and finally helped me caulk all those many holes then helped me prime prime prime + paint paint paint.  LOTS OF WORK!

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Did anyone noticed the door changed colors during that tut, lol?

Door makeover:

During the middle of the b&b treament, I HAD to paint that dreary door!  It was so dark & didn't allow any light to come in the front of the house.  

On the right side of this pic you can also see the picture mantle that was created using a 5" piece of wood.  It was simply nailed in laying flat [on top of the 5" moulding] then a second smaller moulding was nailed underneath it so it gave the shelf a bevelled look.

Here's an after shot before we painted the trim and the rest of the board & batten white.  MUCH better!  I also spray frosted the windows so no one could see in but it still allows light to come through during the day.

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Love the fresh room!

ps: the post below this is the completed shelf! better quality/up-close pics ;)

[linky love HERE!]