ORC Master Bedroom, Week 6: Board & Batten Feature Wall

It is now Week 6 of the ORC! Sharing a room challenge still feels insignificant after what has happened in the world lately, but we are committed to finish what we started, just as we are committed to be better advocates for all people of color. Read this post, if you are wondering what happened to ORC Week 5, but you can catch up on Spring 2020’s One Room Challenge, here:

• Week 1 – The Before Tour
• Week 2 – The Design Plan
• Week 3 – All About Paint
• Week 4 – How to Move an Outlet / How to Patch Drywall

This week we share a board and batten feature wall install on this wall!

board & Batten feature wall IDEAS

There’s been a long-standing love affair with board and batten in our life. We installed it at the entry of our second house (wish I had a picture of it), used it on several flip houses – *hello* Modern Split, and just so happens to be the style of siding on our current home. 

I don’t think it is going out of style any time soon, especially when used sparingly. 

Check out this inspirational space that influenced our vision:

How to Install a Board and Batten Feature Wall with a Shelf

Step 1: Determine your Desired Height

The first step to a board and batten feature wall is to determine the height. You can take board and batten all the way up to the ceiling, if you want, but we chose to go ¾ of the way up the door molding. One reason for this choice is our ceiling height and the other has to do with a need for book storage. Switching up the original design took away most of the floating shelves on the TV wall as you saw in Week 4, so this compensated for the change. 

Step 2: Board Width and design

Several variations exist with board and batten. Some use skinnier vertical pieces and thicker horizontal, other designs call for the same board width throughout. 

As we shared in ORC Week 1, the master and sitting room has fairly tall base molding. This fact combined with the anticipated height a shelf with books on top would add on top of the finished board and batten and shelf inclined us to choose boards all the same width. It seemed to balance the scales, so to speak. We chose a primed 1 x 4 for both horizontal and vertical boards.

Spacing between vertical boards also varies based on board width and the length of the feature wall. We preferred the feature wall to appear framed-out, with a vertical piece along the left corner of the wall and the door frame on the right, so worked with in that space.

Step 3: Install Bracket of Choice into Studs

I can’t stress enough the importance of securing brackets *INTO STUDS*, especially if you plan on having a usable shelf that will hold heavy books. Try to maintain the most symmetrical spacing possible, but screwing the brackets into studs will keep you from having a big headache later. 

Tip: Stud spacing is usually 16” on center and you can use a stud finder like this one. 

We chose this bracket, because we imagined it would look cleaner from the underside of the shelf.

Step 4: Notch Out Horizontal Ledger Board

The L style we chose, in order for the shelf to remain flush with the top ledger board, we needed to notch it out.

Uriah shows you and explains more about this on our IG Stories “Board and Batten”.

Step 5: Install Top Horizontal Board

Ensuring the wood is level, screw the board into studs using three to four inch decking screws into your top horizontal board.

Step 6: Install Vertical Pieces 

This part was tricker than it seemed like it should have been. Simple math, but after a few tries, we achieved perfectly even spacing between the pieces.

Our base moulding has a decorative piece on the top. Removing this decorative piece across the entire wall would have required more drywall patching and quite honestly we were over it, so opted not to. Not my preference, but I’ll allow it. 

Using an oscillating tool, we marked each edge of the board on the base molding, then cut out the decorative piece. I’m kicking myself for not catching more pictures of this part, but you’ll see what I’m talking about near the end of this post.

Step 7: Wood Fill, Caulk & Paint

Using wood filler is fairly straight forward, but caulking takes some skill. Two important factors in a quality caulk job are your caulk gun and even distribution. I’ll write up a post on all Uriah’s tips soon, but if you follow us on Instagram and prefer video, he shows you in a story highlight called “Board and Batten”).

After the wood filler hardens and caulk dried it was time for paint! I struggled between Onyx Black and Wrought Iron, both Benjamin Moore colors, but in the end chose the black!

This easy DIY feature wall is a project that adds a healthy amount of visual interest into the space and it only took one day to install! Book storage on the floating shelf creates the functional decor I need in my life. You should definitely try it if you’ve been thinking about a board and batten wall with a shelf.

Ya’ll! We are so close! Just one more post, then the reveal! Let me know if you have any questions about this project, the one room challenge or feature walls in general in the comments below. Thanks for following along and don’t forget to follow the other participants by looking through the One Room Challenge Blog Page

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