It’s Wednesday the 27th, which means it’s time to share this season’s unofficial Pinterest Challenge project (not sponsored — just Katie’s idea to get us to stop pinning and start doing). Huzzah!
This season’s challenge was our biggest yet: we added character to a previously bare hallway with simple board and batten.
A week later it looks like this. Woot!
Is it weird that I’ve been sitting on the floor just staring at it?
A few readers who’ve installed board and batten or wainscoting commented that photos don’t do it justice — and they were right. Pictures are flat; in person the dimension is what makes it special. It adds polish and interest to a once-drab hallway we walk through dozens of times a day.
There are plenty of tutorials out there, so for this challenge I took inspiration from a few board-and-batten posts and then put our own spin on it. We still have some artwork to hang, of course, but the transformation is already noticeable.
Before we started, we read a handful of helpful tutorials:
- Ana at Ana-White
- Sara at Thrifty Decor Chick
- Kate at Centsational Girl
- Emily at Decor Chick
We’ll post a full tutorial tomorrow, including video of each step — we just didn’t have time to edit everything before sharing photos today. The project took nearly the full week we set aside, but none of the individual steps were difficult, so this is a very do-able weekend project if you break it into stages. Our general process was:
- measure and gather materials
- mark, level, and attach the top rail
- nail and glue the battens
- fill nail holes and caulk seams
- sand filled areas and prime all the wood
- paint the wood and the lower wall white
- paint the upper wall your chosen color (doing this beforehand is even easier)
For the wall color we chose a soft platinum gray (Moonshine by Benjamin Moore) to coordinate with the adjoining framed-hallway color and keep the small space feeling open. We avoided anything too dark to prevent the hallway from feeling closed-in. The tone-on-tone look keeps the focus on the dimension of the board and batten while still feeling cohesive. Note: you can see in one photo that the trim in the framed hallway still needs to be painted pure white to match the new board and batten.
We’ll share a full budget breakdown tomorrow once we sort receipts. The paint was still drying when these after photos were taken, so we can’t wait to detail the hows and whys. It took time, but nothing was overly complicated — which meant we actually finished the Pinterest Challenge for once!
Be sure to check in on Katie, Megan, and Michelle to see their challenge projects too — they’ll be sharing theirs today as well.
Now we’d love to see what you tackled for the Pinterest Challenge. If you blogged about your project, please add your link using the “Add Your Link” button at the bottom of this post. When adding your entry:
- paste the direct URL to your specific project post (not your homepage)
- use a descriptive project name (for example, “Homemade Leaf Wreath” instead of your personal name)
- consider linking back to the project posts that inspired you and to any original sources so they get credit
If you don’t have a blog, feel free to share a link in the comments or link to a public photo gallery so we can see your pics. I’m excited to see what you all created!