This is our back hallway. It’s just off the kitchen and is the entry from the garage. It is also where I keep the boys jackets, backpacks, my purse and everything else that needs to be dumped when we come into the house.
I’ve wanted to make a “mudroom” in this space for over a year. Obviously there isn’t room for a bench (I’ve tried to convince myself that a small one might work but I know it would be completely in the way.) but I’ve wanted to add board and batten with hooks. Why I haven’t gotten around to it sooner, I don’t know. Probably because the little hook thing I had worked just fine. Until a couple weeks ago when one of them broke because it had too much hanging on it!
That was all the motivation I needed. Last Saturday I told my husband he was going to be putting up board and batten. He had no clue what I was talking about so I pulled up Pinterest and showed him some examples. I wish had done this months and months ago because it was SO easy and cost almost nothing! It was finished by the end of the weekend.
Of course we had the wood we needed in the garage. One wide board to use across the top (this is the board or board and batten) and the skinnier boards to sit perpendicular to it (known as batten). We did have to buy one extra skinny board to use as the baseboard.
Hubby measured the wall and cut the boards to fit.
He put two good coats of white trim paint on all of the boards.
While the paint dried, he tore out the existing baseboard and patched up the wall with spackle. (The angles of the old baseboard would not fit right with the batten boards so we had to replace the baseboards with a straight edge board.)
Once the boards were dried he brought them in and measured and marked the distance between the batten pieces.
The batten pieces were secured to the wall with nails and the board was attached with screws to ensure it would hold the weight of whatever would hang on the hooks.
The screw and nail holes were covered with some wood putty.
Then sanded smooth.
It took two coats of paint to cover the walls and one more coat on the wood to cover the putty.
I purchased the hooks from Hobby Lobby. They were $3.99 each but I got them when they were 50% off so all together I only spent $6.
And my board and batten wall was finished! Seriously, it was that easy!
And it cost us about $15! If you didn’t have the wood and paint like we did, I’d say you would spend about $50. Not too bad!