Here’s a little insight re: how my brain works. I see the results of a home project someone else does. I think about it, realize I have no skills (or resources) in that area, and LOGICALLY decide I’m going to go for it. When I told my husband I wanted to do a board and batten wall in our living room, he took a deep breath and smiled. Not only did he have no idea what B + B was, but he knew this was about to be a hell of a project, and that my mind was already made up. He’s the best, and spoiler alert: we only got in one argument during the whole project, so we’re calling that a success.
Here’s what we started with. Our house was built in 1980. The walls are textured, and I suspected probably not level. The first several steps of this process involved getting hardboard up to give us a flat surface to start with. If you don’t have textured walls, do a happy dance, and then skip past the first section.
MATERIALS/TOOLS:
- Tape Measurer
- Level
- Sandpaper
- Woodfiller
- Painter’s Tape
- Hardboard + Liquid Nails (only necessary if you have textured walls and want a smooth surface to start)
- Cutting Edge (only necessary for hardboard portion)
- Caulk + Caulking Gun (buy more than you think you need)
- Nail Gun + Nails (we borrowed these from a friend because, again, no resources or clue)
- Circular Saw (not the ideal tool but what we had)
- MDF for pattern and trim if desired. *See note below, as well as specific products we used.
- Paint Sprayer (we bought this in the middle of the project)
- Paint (+ Primer if necessary)
Grab some paint samples and toss a couple coats on to see what you like best. 
If you’re putting up a hardboard layer first, measuring is honestly the hardest part. You need to take into consideration both 1) How you’ll need to cut the hardboard to fit your wall, and 2) How you’ll need to space out the batten to cover the seams and give you the look you want. I’m not kidding, I felt like I was back in HS Geometry for a minute and I didn’t love it. 
Our wall wasn’t a perfect rectangle (we had to work around the fire place) so we had to make some cuts on one piece to frame that area out. 
We decided to replace our trim + baseboards at the same time. If you’re doing that, pull them off before you do anything else. 
Use the studfinder and mark them on the floor so you can access them later. The hardboard will prevent the studfinder from working once it’s up. 
One piece at a time: Put Liquid Nails on the back of the hardboard. Put hardboard onto the wall + secure with nails all around the perimeter.
HOT TIP 1: if you’re doing the hardboard + Liquid Nails Portion, play with patterns and amounts. If you look closely at our finished product, you can see the pattern on a few pieces. Oops.
Measure, measure, measure. If you’re using hardboard, you’ll need to do this before you get the boards up, because you’ll need to cover the seams with the boards. We started with 24″, and adjusted based on how wide our wall was. To get it to be even, we ended up with around 22″ in between the vertical boards (measured from center to center). Our pattern included both horizontal and vertical boards, so we had to crunch some numbers and draw some mockups before we could move forward.
Taping the pattern off might feel like an annoying step, but I promise it will save you a ton of time on the backend. It’ll give you a great idea of how it’ll look, and help with measuring/spacing.
This is what we used for the design. 
This is what we used for the floorboards/to trim around the door. 
We got the vertical boards + floor/ceiling trim up first. Tip on measuring/cutting below.
HOT TIPS 2 + 3: Make sure you’re buying MDF that is priced per PIECE, not per foot. Don’t make the same $400 and awkward return process mistake that we did. When it is time to cut, measure length of the wall, make one cut, and then use that to gauge the rest of the pieces. It’s unlikely that your wall is perfectly rectangular. For example: your first cut is 90″. The next piece might night to be 90.25, then the next 89.8, etc. Write a list of what cuts you need to make, and make them all at once, marking them as you go so you know where they go on the wall when you’re done.
*Note: if you’re buying 1×3″ boards, they’re actually 2/3″ x 2.5″. This is important when it comes to measuring. We ended up with kind of funky dimensions because we were doing trim as well and we needed them to be flush with each other.
When you put the batten and/or trim up, use the nail gun, and come back with in with wood filler to cover the small holes made from the nails. If you’re only doing vertical boards, you are ready to move onto filling holes/sanding/caulking/painting!
If you’re doing horizontal boards as well, buckle up. I’m in LOVE with our final product, but this part definitely took some brainpower. We used the same tip above. Cut a sample piece and used it as a guide to cut the rest. Inevitably some spaces were 22″, some were 21.25″, etc.
To get the horizontal pieces right, we started on the left side of the wall, and used the sample cut and the level to draw a line with red pencil on the wall. We continued that with each section. Then when the pieces were cut, we used that red line as a guide, then grabbed the level and double checked each piece before we nailed it in.
There will inevitably be some small gaps where the horizontal and vertical boards come together. We used wood filler, let it dry, and sanded it down in those spots. IN RETROSPECT, I would recut. You can see these spots on the finished product and I wish I would have redone it. If the gap is small, wood filler is fine!
Okay, so design is up. Get some wood filler in those holes, let it dry, and sand it down. We did this by hand, but I bought an orbital sander after this project because they’re affordable and I didn’t want to have to do that again. You want to make sure your sanding is done before you caulk so that dust isn’t getting in way.
You’ll want to caulk along every seam and corner. This is SO IMPORTANT. It makes the design look seamless on your wall. You’ve put so much work into this, don’t stop now! The hard parts are done. Run the gun along the seam and then use your finger to smooth it out/make sure it gets spread out. Keep a wet washcloth with you to clean your fingers off as you go. Once the caulk is on, let it dry for awhile before priming/painting. We waited overnight.
Since we decided to use the paint sprayer, we taped off more than we would have if we were using a roller. 
This is my husband getting a hang of the sprayer. It serves no purpose in this tutorial but it makes me laugh so it’s included. 
We opted to use primer because the surface of the hardboard was so smooth. When we put paint samples on, they didn’t stick super well. The HD employee recommend a gripper primer, so that’s what we used. If you’re not using hardboard, you can probably skip the primer.
Getting the primer on also gave me a chance to figure out what the hell I was doing with this paint sprayer. Although, it was hard to see since I was spraying white on white, but that’s neither here nor there. I had it (mostly) figured out by the second coat of actual paint.
It took some time to figure out the right distance, proportions of water to paint, etc. I think this will vary based on the project, but we ended up using 5-10% water each time we filled up the paint sprayer. The paint said you could do another coat within an hour or two, but we did one in the morning and one at night. The only reason we didn’t put another day or so in between is because it was almost Thanksgiving and we wanted the room to be done!
Here’s the final product! All things considered, we are SO happy with it. Everywhere the light is reflecting on the top is where the Liquid Nails dried funky underneath.
Paint is Behr Nocturne Blue. We wanted a deep teal, but didn’t want navy or the kind of teal you’d see in a kindergarten classroom. We liked it in the sample but are thrilled with how it came out when the wall was complete.
I should add, some people paint the wall, and then paint the boards and put them up. Because we were working with so many factors (and had the sprayer), we decided to do it all at once. It worked well for us.
Throughout this project, I learned how to use several tools, cried a little, and then felt sooo accomplished and proud when it was complete. My husband helped me with every step, and my mom hopped on countless FaceTime calls to give me her advice. Because I’m insane, my eyes go straight to the imperfections when I look at it, but they are also a reminder of how hard we worked and how much we learned. This was a hell of a project to start with, but I’m so proud of it and it totally transformed the room.
Tell me if you try it! Or tell me what project you’re the most proud of. And if you have questions, put them below!