We hardly even recognize our living room any more! We put in new windows and a new front door, and painted....but the walls in this dumb old house are so not plumb. So we had a bit of an issue with our front door. The door is in level, but the wall...not so much. Not matchy-matching.
After a whole lot of thinking, I decided that the best way to hide that uneven-ness was to put up some paneling that would hide it. But then we had to figure out how to do it. Board and batten is very Arts and Crafts style, and really goes along with the 1930's bungalow. So I thought that would be perfect. My brother had done it in the baby's nursery and it looked lovely, so I decided we'd just go for it. It would not only cover up the wonky wall and make it look flush with the door, but it would also cover up any lead-based paint that was baby hand/mouth height (nooooo we're not expecting yet, but just for our future baby's health!) AND would cover up the nasty drywall texturing and poorly done seams. Killing 3 birds with one (headache of a) stone!
One of the toughest parts was figuring out what height to have it, and then how far apart to space the battens. There were some seams in the drywall that were really obvious, and we wanted to use the paneling to cover those up. So that kind of helped us decide how high to place the boards. Our ceilings are about 8'6", and the paneling goes up about 53 inches (about halfway). I was afraid it would make the already small room look even smaller, but wanted to cover up those dang seams so we just went for it.
The next step was to cut and install all the baseboards. We got rid of the old moulding that was down there, and replaced it with plain 1x6 MDF. A nice clean line and even though the room is small, the kind of chunky baseboard doesn't seem overwhelming. After that, we had to figure out how to get the main board attached to the wonky wall.
The bottom of the wall by the door was in at least 1 inch further than the wall at the top of the door, which was flush to the door. So I did some measuring and had Ben cut some wedge-shaped pieces that we could attach the board to. After those were up, the rest seemed like it went up pretty smoothly. We used 1/8" tempered hardboard from Home Depot, in 4' x 8' pieces. We kind of just cut and nailed up the pieces in whatever measurements made the most sense, trying to get the most pieces out of one board that we could. In hindsight, I would have planned the batten placement first and tried to cut the boards so the seams would be under the battens, even though that would have made the cutting more difficult.
We then put up the chair rail trim (although its not actually chair rail height, I don't know what else to call it). We just used simple 1x4 MDF for that. After getting all that up, all we had left to do was place the battens (the vertical boards). We decided to use thinner boards for the battens so there weren't too many chunky pieces in the room, and I am so glad we did! I was originally going to use 1/2 x 4" boards for those, so they would match the window trim and the top chair rail trim. But I think that would have been way too many thick boards on the walls. So we used 1/2" x 3" x 4' poplar boards from Lowe's. Ben cut those to size and nailed em up, then it was time to caulk and paint!
Except I hate caulk. And paint. I had read that the tempered hardboard, since it is coated with an oil of some sort, can be hard to paint since the oil bleeds through. So I wanted to use Killz primer on it. But that stuff is really, really awful. It Killz you with its fumes, I'm pretty sure that's why they call it that. So after nearly dying after priming only like 1/8th of the room, I switched to Zinsser Smart Prime, which did an excellent job and did NOT kill me.
Anyway, we got it done! There is still some final caulking to do and some touch up-painting. But it looks so amazing, if I do say so myself! The transformation is incredible, from drab and dark greenish-brown everywhere, to light and bright yellow and white with some beautiful new lines in the room.
If I were to do this again, I probably would rethink a few things. First of all, I would have planned the spacing of the battens sooner (although it was hard to figure out without having the other stuff up first since we're both visual people!). That would have allowed us to hide the seams in the boards behind the battens. But now we have some seams that are kind of going to be impossible to hide with caulk/wood filler/paint.
I also would have gone a little easier on the caulk. That stuff is miserable. It is so messy and gets everywhere and is impossible to make look nice if you can't get it perfect before it dries. This actually mostly was a problem on the windows since there are more seams on those that aren't hidden in a corner. But anyway, go light with the caulk and make sure its perfect before it dries!
Our little living room is about 10x12. We used:
5 - 1/8"x4'x8' tempered hardboard ($8.98 each)
5 - 1"x6"x8' MDF ($6.72 each)
4 - 1"x4"x8' MDF ($4.32 each)
16 - 1/2"x3"x4' Poplar hobby boards ($4.78 each)
2 or 3 tubes of DAP Dynaflex 230 caulking ($4.12 each)
outlet spacers ($6ish for one package-we still need to do this and get all the outlet covers back on)
1 package of 2 1/2 inch finish nails ($10ish? I'm too lazy to find a receipt or find it online) (we borrowed my brother's nail gun....not sure how we would have done it without that tool!)
TOTAL $200ish
And one more "before" and "after" (just have to paint the door trim now!)
We sure love it! It is starting to feel more like a nice clean, comfortable "home"!
Proud of all the hard work you two have done to turn a house into your home.
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