With so many people spending so much time at home, lots of homeowners have turned to home improvement projects this past year. Take young couple Sarah Lessard and Guillaume Maheux, for example, who were self-building a modern farmhouse-style house and chose to use moulding to create a beautiful, budget-friendly board and batten wall. Let’s take a look at how they did it!  

A board and batten wall is basically a geometric design made up of vertical and horizontal strips. It’s a farmhouse classic, but it goes nicely with many other styles, too (think minimalist, classic, modern, and the list goes on).

Interested? Read on for Sarah and Guillaume’s step by step.  

 

 

Prep  

 Start out by measuring to find the length and width of the walls you want to spruce up. Decide how high you want your moulding and how you want to lay it out. The height you choose (whole wall, bottom half, bottom third, etc.) is entirely up to you, but do make sure it works with your room’s proportions. Sarah and Guillaume went for the whole wall—an excellent way to compliment their high ceilings. Before buying your mouldings, measure the spacing between them so you don’t get more than you need. Don’t forget to factor doors and windows into your calculations.  

Step 1.

 Mark the wall where you want the first piece of moulding to rest, then draw a straight horizontal line to guide your installation. Do the same with any other walls you’re working with, making sure all of your lines are level.   Measure and cut your moulding. Use construction glue to attach the pieces to the wall, following the lines you drew. Now for the vertical battens: draw the lines on the wall, and then measure, cut and install the pieces.

Step 2.

Start from the bottom and work your way up, making sure everything is level. Don’t forget to add strips along the bottom, left and right edges of the wall. A strip along the top edge can also be an interesting design choice for your room.      

 

Suggestion: If you’re not going for the whole wall, you could add a square moulding ledge to your top strip for a nice finishing touch.  It is going to create a small  shelf.

 

 

 

 

Step 3. 

Nail the strips to the wall.   

Step 4. 

Now for finishing: fill and sand the nail holes and gap between mouldings and walls. Paint your strips with a finish coat if you want a more finished result. 

Six sure-shot board and batten tips 

  1.  Before installing your mouldings, apply with a roller the paint on your wall.  Paint your mouldings before their installation.  It will greatly reduce brush painting.  Finish will be better quality that way.
  2. When you’re buying your materials, keep in mind that you’re going to cut your strips as you go, to make sure they’re the right size for your room.  
  3. If you already have texture on your walls, you’re going to want to use a backer board or apply a smoothing product to even out the surface. 
  4. Keeping your lines level is more important than having them parallel to the floor. After all, floors and ceilings are not always perfectly level.  
  5. To keep the distances between the strips even, subtract the width of all the vertical battens from the total width of the wall, then divide this number by the number of spaces between the battens. This way, you’ll know exactly how much moulding you need for each panel.  
  6. Another way to keep your spacing even is to cut a board the exact same size and shape as the spacing between the strips and use that as a guide to install them.  
  7. Don’t forget to keep the same spacing between the finishing strips (along the bottom and far edges of your wall) and the other strips in your design.    

For their board and batten wall, Sarah and Guillaume used our rectangular #1253 white primed MDF.

Check out our article for six fun ways to decorate your walls with mouldings.