It’s Wednesday the 27th, which means it’s time to share our entry for this season’s (completely unofficial) Pinterest Challenge — a fun, unsponsored project series dreamed up by Katie to encourage people to stop pinning and start doing. Huzzah!
This season’s challenge was our biggest yet: we added board and batten to a previously plain hallway to give it more character and polish. The transformation was dramatic and completely worth the effort.
A week after finishing, the space looks like this — bright, textured, and more finished than before. It feels like a new corridor in the house.
I’ll admit it: I’ve found myself sitting on the floor just staring at it.
People who have installed board and batten or wainscoting before warned that photos don’t fully capture the effect — and they were right. Pictures can look flat, but in person the added depth and shadow lines create real dimension. It turns a drab, frequently used hallway into something that feels intentional and well-designed.
There are plenty of great tutorials online, so for this Pinterest Challenge we gathered inspiration from several talented bloggers and then added our own spin. We still need to hang a bit more art, but the structural work is done and the results speak for themselves.
Before we started, we read several helpful guides and tutorials, including:
- This guide from Ana at Ana-White
- Sara’s step-by-step post at Thrifty Decor Chick
- Kate’s detailed walkthrough at Centsational Girl
- Emily’s project notes at Decor Chick
We’ll publish a full tutorial soon, including a complete video of our process and step-by-step instructions. For this post we were racing to get photos taken, so we haven’t finished editing the footage or compiling the full how-to yet. The overall project took nearly the full week we set aside, but no single step was especially difficult — it’s a very approachable DIY when you take it one stage at a time. Our general workflow was:
- measure and gather materials
- mark and level the top rail, then attach it
- nail and glue the vertical battens in place
- fill nail holes and caulk seams
- sand filled areas and prime all of the wood
- paint the wood and the wall below the rail white
- paint the wall above the rail in your chosen color (it’s often easier to paint this first)
For the wall color we chose a soft platinum gray (Moonshine by Benjamin Moore) to match the adjacent framed hallway. We wanted a cohesive, open feel and were careful not to use anything too dark that might make the narrow hallway feel closed in. The pale gray pairs beautifully with the white board and batten, giving a subtle tone-on-tone look that emphasizes the architectural detail without overpowering the space. Note: in the photo you can still see that the trim in the framed hallway needs to be painted pure white to match the board and batten.
We’ll share the full budget breakdown and receipts in the upcoming tutorial — the paint was literally still drying when we shot these after photos. We’re excited to post the detailed instructions and the video so anyone can tackle this project. It was time-consuming, but not technically difficult, which made it a perfect Pinterest Challenge project.
Also, be sure to check out what Katie, Megan, and Michelle created for this challenge — they’ll be sharing their projects today as well.
Finally, we’d love to see what you made during this Pinterest Challenge week. If you blogged your project, please add a link to your specific post (not your homepage) and give it a clear title, such as “DIY Board and Batten Hallway.” If you don’t have a blog, you can share a public gallery on a photo-sharing site and post the link in the comments. We’re really excited to see your creativity and hear about your process.