Dining Room Board and Batten

I finally finished my dining room wall that has been 7 months in the making. It really didn't take very long once I got started. My husband and I probably spent a total 3 hours on Saturday putting it all up and filling in nail holes, and that time includes going to Home Depot and having them cut the wood. Anyway, I'll just let the pictures do the talking for a second, that's all we care about anyway.

I love that now when you walk in the front door you don't see a huge empty wall anymore, you see this! And once I get some art up there it will be even better.

Now onto the technical stuff. Since there are literally thousands of tutorials for this out there in blog land I will spare you most of the boring details. But here is a quick rundown of what we did. The first step was to paint the wall. Since we have textured walls I debated weather I would do the real board and batten or the fake. Doing it the real way would have required buying a huge sheet of mdf  and applying it to the wall. I decided to forgo the mdf and just paint it. In the end if I hated how it looked with the textured wall, I would just cut the mdf to fit between the battens and put it up later. I realized that this would be a lot more work, but I'm just trying to save money over here.

Next we went to Home Depot, bought the wood, and had them cut it there for us. I used 3 1/2 inch wide sheets of primed mdf for the vertical battens and 5 1/2 inch wide mdf board for the top. In all the wood cost about $50. Most people paint the battens before they put them up, but we decided to just go ahead and put them up first. I really didn't notice that painting them after they were up was any harder than it would have been if I did it first.

Next, we decided to put the top, vertical, on first. The Home Depot guy was not the most accurate and none of our boards came out the same length. So we decided it would be best to have them flush at the top and then fill in any gaps at the bottom.

To apply everything we first did a squiggly, I'm getting real technical here, of liquid nails and slapped it on the wall. We then followed with four or five nails for support. We used my dad's nail gun, but a hammer and nails would work too. Those guys aren't going anywhere!

Once we got everything up, I then went through and Spackled all the nail holes and gaps. I then caulked all the edges. Caulking made it look so much nicer and finished.

Before Caulk

After caulk

Finally, I painted, and turned it all into this:

Weekend Snapshots

Happy Monday! I hope you all had a great weekend. The little guy and I are headed to Texas in a few days  and then a couple days after I get back my in-laws are going to be here for Christmas. So needless to say, I have been scrambling to get things done around the house. I feel like for every item I cross off my list, two more things are added!I got a really good start on two major projects over the weekend.

First, I got my gift wrapping started, and I loved every second of it!

I love wrapping presents! Growing up, my brothers would have me wrap all of their presents for them before I went to bed on Christmas eve, yes, including my own. Part of the fun of giving someone a gift is wrapping it up all cute. Also, having presents under the tree just makes it feel more festive. I didn't get all of my presents wrapped, but I got a good start on it. 

Second, we got the board and batten up!

This is just a sneak peek of the wall. I still need to finish patching some nail holes and painting, but it's almost done and it's looking so good! I'm really excited to show you the finished product! And if I've played my cards right, hopefully you will be seeing a pretty new pendant light hanging over that table after Christmas. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Sprucing up the Walls...finally

Many of the walls in my house have been very neglected since we moved in. I have had plans of putting up board and batten on our dining room wall as well as a wall in the living room. It's just been a lot harder than I thought to find time to actually do it, so our sad little dining area has looked like this for that last few months. 

I finally decided I just need to start it so that I will actually get it done. My husband's family is coming for Christmas, so that is my motivation to get something on the walls. Last night my husband helped me measure everything out so I could paint, hence the blue line on the wall.

This morning I got the wall painted. I know it's not even close to being done, but just having that paint on the wall is helping me visualize how it will look when it's done,* and I am loving it! I probably won't be working on it anymore this week, with the holiday and family time and all, but hopefully I will have it finished by the middle of next week. I can't wait! Once I get the board and batten done, I can finally paint over all the beige. Woo Hoo!

I also plan on getting one of these guys from Ballard Designs to put over the table. Hopefully that will happen sooner rather than later. So if anyone is planning on getting me a Christmas present this year, feel free to send the large one my way!