Board, NOT Bored!

No, we certainly aren’t bored around here.  Look what we’ve DH has been up to this weekend:

We have officially jumped on board {get it? giggle giggle} and are keeping up with the Joneses.blog.com.  We might not be the first bloggers to put up board and batten, but I’m sure we aren’t the last. And, we’re doin’ it the hard traditional way, actually using boards. I know there are SO many great tutorials and pictures out there in blogland of people who did their “board” and batten the shortcut easy way….without actually using boards. Everyone’s pictures look so great which made it very tempting…but alas, we have a bit of texture on our walls so we decided to put in the extra step and make it look stunning. 

Let me back up a paragraph for those of you thoroughly confused at this point.  This is what board and batten looks like:
This picture is from the ever-famous tutorial written by Karla from It’s the Little Things that Make a House a Home.  I think she’s inspired half of the blogging world to install board and batten from her posts alone! She and her husband did an amazing job, it looks absolutely beautiful.

Anyways, board and batten is a style of wainscoting treatment for walls that consists of boards nailed to the walls first and then “batten” or thin slats of boards nailed on top. It is often used on exteriors as well and the battens are installed to cover up the seams between the boards.
So Karla, and so many other bloggers, have been installing this great looking “board” and batten but without the actual boards.  They just paint the lower portion of the wall white, rather than installing boards.  And then they install thick baseboards, the battens and a chair rail of sorts. In Karla’s case, above, she installed a chair rail with a picture ledge {thin groove on top} so she could lean pictures along the top without them slipping off….genius idea, we’re gonna do it too!

But for our board and batten, we have chosen to install the boards as well as the battens. {Something you really should consider if your walls have any texture on them}  It’s really not all that much more difficult or expensive…just one extra step, which actually makes the rest of it a bit easier. 

We’ll give a full tutorial when we’re all finished, but just wanted to give you a sneak peek of our project underway!  I’m so excited!

Making sure everything is level and marking the location for the 2nd board.

Liquid nails to help hold the board before we nail.

Up goes that board! {Training –em young}

And here’s what it looks like right now. 
My time’s up, I gotta go PAINT!!

Stay tuned!