how to easy board and batten wall
If you’re looking for a fairly simple home improvement project that packs a punch and makes a big difference, look no further than a board and batten wall. I’ve now done a few in my home and I’ve learned a few tips and tricks along the way. My first wall looks great, but my second wall looks even better! So where do you start?
There’s many ways to plan out a batten wall, but for me the first step is to determine the width of the battens that you’d like to use. What is the look you want to go for? Thicker or thinner battens? You can mix it up! For both of my walls I used 1×3 pieces of wood. For this particular wall I did 1×3 going vertical and a 1×4 going horizontal along top, and then a 1×3 again to act as a “shelf” on top of that. I knew I wanted to put up some decor and display pictures in our bedroom. If this was in a space like a hallway I would opt for a smaller width along the top edge.
TIP : Always measure the actual piece of wood, it may be labeled 1×3 but the width of the wood is actually 2.5 inches and you need the actual width to determine out the spacing of your battens.
Now, we need to determine the spacing. between the battens, which is the hardest part in my opinion, because math 🤪 but you want to make sure your numbers are accurate before you start nailing the battens into the wall.
determine the batten spacing
The best way for me to do this was I made a chart. Because the width of your wall determines the spacing of your battens if you want them to be even. You can have them closer or further apart, but you want them to be evenly spaced. More space between the battens on your wall just means less battens, and less space means between them. means more battens. Measure the width of your wall, its easiest to work in inches for this, for my wall it was 147 inches. Then you need to subtract the total width of your battens to determine the actual wall space that will be seen. For example if you are using 10 battens, at 2.5 inches that would be a total of 25 inches that we will be subtracting from 147 giving us a total of 122 inches of wall space. From there, we need to figure out how much space is in between the battens. If you have 10 battens, then you have 9 spaces. We then divide 9 into 122 and that equals 13.55 or basically 13 1/2 inches. Whooooo math 
! But ya get it? Heres a simple chart, and you can go as big or as small as you’d like until you get the look you’re going for. (They also don’t need to be odd, thats just what I used for this example.) I just do this until I find the spacing for the look that I want.
If you’re doing an entire room you can easily just pick a spacing you like and go around the room putting up your battens with that space between them. You may have one last spot thats a little bigger or smaller you can hide somewhere and avoid all the math! But if you’re doing an accent wall, you’re better off finding a spacing that works with the width of that one wall.
Once you’ve determined your spacing, the next step is to start nailing them up on the wall. I like to use the Ryboi airstrike brad nailer. Its very easy to use making it beginner friendly, and the batter lasts a long time and having no cord is very convenient. The the battery you do have to purchase separately, here. I like to install the top rail first, and then the vertical battens. This way you can be sure that the top piece is perfectly level, and then each vertical batten below it might be a different length. In my home the pieces on the right were 1/4 inch shorter than the ones on the left. But I know that the top pieces are level, and it wasn’t any discrepancy you could see to the naked eye.
After you have all the pieces nailed on your next steps are wood filler and caulk. The rule of thumb is that caulk is used between wood and drywall, and wood filler is used between wood and wood. So the cracks between the wood, and the nail holes is wood filler, and along the sides of the wood is caulk.
TIP: Use a baby wipe to wipe down the caulk, so much quicker and easier than using your finger, which also works just as well if you don’t have any on hand!
After you’ve finished caulking and the wood filler has dried, sand the wood filler so that it is smooth, and do another coat if you need to to get it smooth. You don’t sand caulk. Last step is to paint! Personally I choose to paint the wall and the boards first because its easier and quicker to roll a first coat first and then just do a quick second coat when I’m done with the caulk and wood filler. However, painting first is not required!
A couple things to look for
A couple other things to keep in mind while doing your wall if you run into these issues.
What do you do if one of your battens runs into an outlet? Easy! You grab a smaller piece of trim at your hardware store, I used a 1×1 piece of trim. I cut it down to make a box for the outlet to go on top of. I then used these electrical outlet spacers to extend the outlet further from the wall. The box is the same depth of the battens and allows it to flow together. The two pictures on the left show the boxes I made to go behind the outlet.
What if the battens don’t meet up and aren’t even where the wood meets? You can see in the one photo on the right that the vertical piece sits further back than the horizontal piece. To fix this I made a shim to put behind it so that it bumped the piece out just enough to become even with the horizontal trim. Now when I wood fill that joint and then sand it, it will be nice and smooth. To make the shim I used the same piece of 1×1 trim that I had bought to make the box and basically just shaved it down with my miter saw to get thin pieces of wood.
I hope this post gives you a little more confidence to try something on your own. This is a great project to start and get into DIY while making a huge impact on your home. I hope you learned something new, or even just reassured you that YOU CAN DO IT!
If you do give it a go, be sure to leave a comment below 
