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Week 2: The most detailed BOARD & BATTEN How-to!
With the onset of this project I was most eager about doing the board and batten. I’ve never done it before and as soon as I saw the look from Jamie Costiglio, I just fell in LOVE. I, of course, started pursuing pinterest and saving every DIY board and batten link I could find.
Source: Jamie Costiglio
It turns out it’s pretty simple. Yet, I was still hit with analysis paralysis when making decisions. Do we do 1” x 2” or cut down MDF? Do we do 3” wide batten or 4”? How far up the wall do we want to go? Do we go straight up from the baseboard or add a base strip on top? And so on…and so on….
Then I finally realized I was overthinking this and really just needed to sit down, IN THE ROOM, and tape it all out to see what I like. From there, I was able to visualize everything. And for me, being able to visualize helps me to feel if I’m going to like it. So off we went to tape our brand new level 5 walls (see week 1 post).
There was a lot to think about. We were starting off with ½” thick baseboards so everything had to be either ½” or less. We had seen some other DIYers do thicker boards and then miter the ends where the bottoms met up with the baseboard, but I just didn’t like the look. I like a very clean tailored look for this room and really wanted every seam to be well thought out and feel intentional. So our design started from the bottom up.
I knew I wanted bigger based boards. Based on research, I found that there are general principles about the ratios of baseboards, crown, and everything in between to the height of the ceiling that are more visually pleasing to the eye and really create substance in the room. These ideas are based on the architectural principles of greco-roman architecture. Be still my art history loving heart!
The above chart was taken from this Laurel Home Blog
We have ~9’ ceilings (no house is perfect) in the bedrooms. Based on these principles our baseboard should be between 6-7”. We currently have 5” baseboards. I didn’t really want to rip off all of the 5” baseboard, much less spend money on replacing it. I also couldn’t find larger sizes readily available. We also had the issue that the baseboards were ½” thick and everything for the board and batten was either much thicker or thinner. What to do?
When we priced out materials we found that prices of a lot of things had gone up and quality had gone down. So in our research, we found that the most cost effective and aesthetically pleasing approach was to use ¼” MDF that we cut down to create the borders, cross beams, and battens. But what to do about connecting that MDF to the baseboard? Do we replace the baseboard? It just didn’t feel right.
Standing in the aisle of Home Depot looking for inspiration, I realized we could use cove molding to add another inch to the base board and make it taller giving it a more substantial look. I would rip down the cove from ¾” on one side to ½” so it would sit perfectly on top of the baseboard. The scoop of the cove molding with then taper to ¼” which would fit perfectly with our board and batten, giving it a seamless look. Yes!!
Now, we just needed to figure out how tall we wanted the board and batten to be and what size the strips needed to be. Using the tape, we figured out we wanted the very top of the board and batten to go to ⅔ the height of the wall. With our ~9’ ceilings, that put our top piece at ~72”. We decided we wanted the top cap to have 2.5” depth and also ¾” thickness which means we were using a 1” x 3”. Since the board and batten was only ¼” thick that would give it a big difference in thickness and relief (aka how much the two different boards are raised from the background or wall), which wouldn’t look right. I also wanted a little bit more finish to the look, so we decided to add a 1” x 2” underneath the top cap board to help with the transition from the MDF to the top cap board.
Now that we had the basics figured out, we needed to decide how wide we were making the board and batten strips. Again, this came down to taping sample sizes onto the wall to see what felt right in the space. As much as I could sit here and say this is the way to do it, you won’t know until you’re in the room doing it, to know if the dimensions are right for the space and your desired look. Don’t be afraid to make some samples, stick them on the wall and sit with them before you make your decision.
The decision was made: 3” battens, 4” top and bottom border, and 3.5” cross beam. The bottom border sat directly on top of the cove molding making the total look of the baseboard 9” inches!! The top rail had the MDF border, with ½” of the border covered by the wide side of the 1” x 2” which was then capped by the 1” x 3” furring strip. That gives the top border a full height of 5 ¾”. It really gives it a substantial look and makes it feel finished. We were finally ready to rip everything down and start installing.
The whole thing only took a couple of days. Ripping down the cove molding for the baseboards was fast. We used brad nails with our brad nailer for installing the ripped down cove. We learned how to use a coping saw to make the corners perfect without having to do 45° miters. More about this later in another post.
To make life easy, we started by installing the bottom border MDF around the room using 1.5” nails alternating the angle to lock it into the drywall when not hitting a stud. We made quick work of that and moved onto focusing on the top border.
Since homes aren’t square and ceilings and floors aren’t even, you want to level your horizontal borders since that is what the eye will notice first, especially if it is off. So that means getting your top board correct and then cutting your battens down to the right length as the distance fluctuates between the base and top border from variations in the floor.
Using a chalk line and laser level we marked our top line for the top cap at 72”. Since we had some overlapping pieces, we figured out where the top MDF board would be in relation to the top cap pieces and started there. This was ~1.75” down from the chalk line (¾” thickness of the top cap piece and 1” of the 1” x 2”). We marked that and made sure it was level all around the room, then nailed in 1.5” nails into the ¼” top border all around the room.
From there, we measured the remaining distance between the top and bottom MDF pieces and cut our batten pieces to size.
In my reading, I found a great DIY trim book that talked about how to install the trim in relation to the main wall you see when you come into a room. For Jaxson’s room, you see the opposing corner because the light from the window draws your eye there. The wall adjacent to it, will be where his crib is placed. That meant we had to start from there to make our measurements and install perfect. Off we went to Inch Calculator to figure out the distance for the battens based on the number of panels we wanted. For the focal wall we liked the look of six panels. We put in the length of the wall, the width of the battens, and the number of panels we wanted. Out it spat the distance and placement of each batten. We repeated this for each wall.
We didn’t try to match the exact measurement of the focal wall on the other walls. Instead, we went for a number that gave us full panels that would be around the same same size as the focal wall. In general, your eye can’t pick up the difference of 18” vs 19” from far away so this made it easier to make the full panels. This was easier than sticking with the same size panel around the room and trying to figure out how to split a panel around a corner and carry the pattern through the next wall. For the corners, we put battens abutting each other to make each wall and the panels on that wall look complete. The only exception is around the closet where we carried it through and it looks like the closet door “interrupted” the panel.
We installed them according to the measurements we calculated on Inch Calculator. Once the battens were complete, we moved onto the top cap pieces.
Jake nailed the 1” x 2” into the top MDF board with a ½” overlap using 1.5” nails (If you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s worth it to invest in a compressor and nail gun set….they have specials on them all that time around the holiday season…#worthit). Then he used a 1” x 3” (culled wood - aka discounted defective cuts of wood-I found at HD that was practically perfect) for the top board. Due to the combined thickness, he used 2.5” nails with some into the board below and some angled into the wall to anchor it.
And with that, we had a look that we loved! Now we had to decide if we wanted to add the cross beams. Sitting with it a few days, I realized I like the look with the cross beams, more than without. It just gave it a little something extra. So, using the same MDF, measured the distance between each batten and cut the cross beams to size. We leveled and marked their positions then nailed those in with 1.5” nails making quick work finishing up the board and batten for the room.
This project is relatively easy and best done with some key tools.
Miter Saw
Brad Nailer and air compressor
Finishing Nailer
Nail punches
Table saw if ripping wood down yourself. Some places will do this for you, but most will not for these sizes of cuts.
Level
Chalk line
A few things we learned along the way:
Measure, measure, and then re-measure: if you’re taking your board and batten around the room, you need to be precise with your measurements and being a little bit off, can throw the whole pattern askew. We forgot to compensate for window trim we were installing and pre-existing door trim which mussed things ups for a bit. #liveandlearn
Trust your level-floors, corners, and ceilings are off in buildings, which means if you are measuring your horizontals from the floor, they are likely going to drift and be off because of this variation. Your eye will pick up on this. Instead, use your level to create a true level with your horizontal beams.
Cut long- this project has a lot of cuts and we found that if we cut everything in batches (e.g. our battens) at a long length and then chopped everything down once we were in the room, it made for easier, faster work, with less mistakes and waste.
Move your saw-we had been cutting everything in our garage to contain dust, but with the amount of cutting you have to do in this project we realized, after a few hundred times up and down the stairs, that it was better and faster to move our chop saw into the room and make our cuts on site.
If you don’t like it, pull it out-There were a number of times where something just didn’t look right even though we had measured and re-measured. Come to find out it wasn’t installed in the right place and our pattern was off. We would rip out sections and then re-install them to get them right. An outsider couldn’t see it, but we could and that’s what mattered to us.
Sink your nails-part of each process is preparing for the next. With the number of nails you’re putting in, you need to make sure that you use a nail punch to get the heads of those down below the surface so you can cover them with spackle to create an ultra smooth surface for your paint to cover. This gives it that designer finished feel instead of beginner DIY look!
Hope you enjoyed this step-by-step and find it useful when you do board & batten! It’s a bit a long, but we hope the details will be useful when planning out your project. Let us know in the comments how your board & batten went!
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