DIY Board and Batten Wall

If you're reading this, you're probably like me.. I always saw these amazing accent walls and everyone sharing these "easy" DIYs and just WISHED I was "handy" enough (or brave enough!) to give it a try. Well, friend, let me tell you that I finally pulled the trigger (thank you, quarantine) and I'm here to tell you that it really IS easy and if I can do it, YOU can! (no really, I'm not crafty at.all.)

My biggest fear when dreaming up a DIY board and batten wall was having to cut the wood to fit my space but guess what? I found Poplar Project Boards at Lowe's and instead of cutting wood, I designed my wall around these precut boards~1.5x4ft (picture below if you want to screenshot and take it with you to your local Lowe's)

Biggest piece of advice here? Check your boards to make sure you get the smoothest/straightest ones possible and also compare the length (some of them varied slightly in size)

Once I had my boards, I measured my total wall space and divided that by how many boards I wanted to use (in this case, I used 8 boards, all ~16inches apart) and used painters tape to tape each vertical board into place.

From there, I used liquid nails to secure each board in place (make sure to use a leveler while doing this!).

Once dry, caulk EVERYTHING and I mean everything. Every little nook and use your finger to smooth the line and remove any excess caulking. Side note: I highly, highly recommend using WHITE paintable caulk. I originally used clear and it literally made this project take 10x longer because everything looked great until it actually dried.

For the top "trim", I lucked out again and found a precut trim piece that I used a small $5 hand saw to cut to size (easy peasy!) Same process here, use a level and liquid nails to secure the top trim piece and CAULK, CAULK, CAULK!

That's it! Now it's time to prim/paint! Another lesson learned here, I would definitely recommend painting the wall and trim pieces individually BEFORE securing everything to the wall. It was a bit time consuming for me to paint around each piece and get nice, smooth lines everywhere but overall, not too shabby for my first go-round and for someone who, again, is NOT crafty lol

Materials List:

1) 8 Poplar Project Precut Boards ($2.36/each at Lowe's)

2) 1 trim piece (~$9, unfortunately I didn't take a picture of this at the store)

3) Liquid Nails ($2.58)

4) DAP Alex Painter's WHITE, paintable caulk ($1.78)

5) Caulk gun ($3.98)

6) Primer/paint (~$15)

Total: ~$51

Are you kidding me? $51 dollars?? Amazing! What do you think of the below/after below?

Ready to pull the trigger on your own DIY board and batten wall? You got this, girl! And feel free to message me with any questions on IG @lovelywhitehome