Entryway Makeover - DIY Board and Batten

DIY Board and batten is an easy and inexpensive way to update a space. See how we transformed our entryway with this version of wainscoting.

We’ve been in our home about 10 years now and have made it through quite a few projects. One of my favorites was the addition of this new front door which I had picked out before we even built the house. Once we installed it, though, the entryway seemed to feel “meh”. I always wanted to add something to the entryway to make it a bit brighter and DIY board and batten wainscoting was the perfect choice.

Home Tour

What you’ll need for DIY board and batten:

Wood or backer if your walls are textured
Wood of choice for batten pieces
Adhesive
Nail gun/nails
Spackle or Caulk
Paint of choice

Here’s the entry before with the gallery wall. I was a little sad to take it down.

Start with a clean slate…

We started out by clearing everything out.

The baseboard trim needed to be replaced as well because of the beveled edge at the top. It wouldn’t accommodate/fit with the flat edge of the wood from the batten and the straight line coming down.

How far apart should wainscoting panels be?

This is totally a personal decision but I did see a recommended space of 12″ to 16″. I decided to measure between the door casing and the inner corner of the stairwell to determine how wide the sections would be in our space. It ended up being 9″.

The wall with the light switch was a bit of a dilemma. I wanted to build a box around it but that ideas was vetoed and we ended up moving the lines which looked better in the long run.

Paint it first.

I was so excited about doing this project, I put the cart before the horse. I started drawing it out to see what it would look like and to figure out how to space out the boards and before I knew it, I was done.

Unfortunately, I realized once everything was mapped out that I still needed to patch all the holes from the gallery wall and then paint the wall the new color BEFORE installing the boards. I cannot tell you how much easier it is doing it that way instead of painting the middle of each square multiple times.

Instead of painting over everything, I left the top part with the lines so we knew where the boards went. That, of course, meant painting in between them.

Also in the midst of this project, we replaced the floor in the great room. Two projects at once, what were we thinking??

What kind of wood do you use for board and batten?

A true board and batten is a flat piece of wood applied to the wall and then the vertical piece or batten is applied directly to the board. You’d want to do this if your wall was very uneven and you needed a flat surface to attached your battens to. You could use 1/2″ MDF or solid plywood.

In our case, we used the wall as the board and added the wood trim or batten directly to it. We used pine boards for the battens in 2.5″ pieces.

I primed and painted the boards before we put them up.

On a side note, I really need to clean my basement!!

For the battens, the cuts are very easy because there are usually no angles and you should only have a couple different sizes. In our case there were a few angled pieces going up the wall of the stairs.

The larger piece on the right in the picture above will be the base piece or trim (replacing the current baseboard) and the top boarder piece as well. We started with the horizontal pieces first. Using a level, we placed the boards where I had drawn out the lines. Then we filled in with the short vertical pieces.

So, tragic error, with everything going on, I forgot to take more pictures. I’m so bummed!

Once all of the batten boards were up I spent a ton of time spackling of all of the joints. You could also use caulk (most people do). Then there was another coat of paint. I used the same color as the trim in our house which is Benjamin Moore Creamy White.

Here’s the finished product…

SOOO much brighter!

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I feel like it pops off the new darker flooring as well.

We also painted the dresser above which I’ll share soon. You can see more furniture makeovers here.

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PIN it for later…

Although I used to love the gallery wall in the entryway, It was time for a change. This DIY board and batten wainscoting was a super easy project and it really didn’t take much time. I’m actually thinking of doing it in our bedroom, too.

I hope you found some inspiration from our entryway makeover. I really appreciate you stopping by!

Happy DIY’ing!

Col