DIY (swine?) board and batten walls!

UPDATE: This bathroom is now finished! Want to see how it all turned out?
Make sure you check it out here in the bathroom reveal!

We made a little bit more progress on our bathroom updates with our Home Depot gift card! Yipee! We are super slow but at least we eventually do make progress.

Before I talk about the kids’ bathroom, you might remember I shared about some of the things from Home Depot that we are going to put in our powder room. Last weekend we also bought an awesome tilt mirror like this from Home Depot for that same bathroom! I love that mirror, it is so simple but classic!

And then sadly (and I think this is one of those Murphy’s Law things) about two weeks ago our master bathroom toilet stopped flushing, so we have been looking into the possibility of needing a new toilet. Just so we can be working on three bathrooms at once.

Meanwhile though, back to the kids’ bathroom, we are making slow but sure progress!

Yes, the wall color is bright. Don’t adjust your monitor. It is bright.  But I’m going to balance it out a bit with the accessories so I’m not too worried about it at this point. Plus, it is a generally dark kids’ bathroom so having a little zing and happiness on the walls in here is going to be fabulous.

 

Swine Swine Everywhere Swine!

And yes, all the woodwork looks … pink (um, yeah, more SWINE).  Because clearly our contractor was in touch with his feminine side when he picked all the paint for this house. Grrr. Must fix that.

What have I done so far in this room?

So far I have painted the walls, the ceiling (this was prior to my new ladder, so I painted it perched on a chair) and we started in on the board and batten! Oh, and I changed the cabinet hardware .

Yes, I painted the ceiling

I decided to paint the ceiling the same as the walls because 1) I like painted ceilings. 2) We have no crown molding in this room. 3) In a small room like this, painting the ceiling makes the room feel more cohesive and not so choppy. 4) I am a horrible painter and cannot keep wall paint OFF the ceiling when I paint, so painting the ceiling makes a project SO much easier than trying to paint a straight line!)

Board and batten the easy way.

To be honest, I was really nervous about doing a board & batten project (our old houses came with them already done, I’m not used to having to ADD so much character to our walls) but I went to my new favorite hangout, Home Depot, with my measurements and they were super helpful. They cut all the battens for me. I used 2 inch mdf battens that were already primed, so it was super easy, no need to cut, saw, sand or prime or anything. YES! Just glue and nail.

 

Primed board and batten.

 

You can nail the battens up without a nail gun.

We don’t own a nail gun, but my hubby has a nail tapper thing (not sure what it is called) so it was not hard at all to nail up the battens the old fashioned way — with a hammer and nails. You just use the tapper thing to sink the nails into the wood so you can’t see them. It really wasn’t hard at all. The only hard part is making sure that all the measuring is done and everything is level and equal. I’m kind of picky about that! We did use some Liquid Nails on the battens first.

Disclaimer: We only used battens, no “board.”
Yes, that might be cheating.

We decided to not use wall boards this time (just battens) even though I would really prefer the look of the wood behind the battens over just seeing the wall. Since this is a second floor kids’ bathroom I decided to skip that one extra step. I think once it is all painted out it will look fine. If this was a main area of my house, I’d definitely consider doing the boards on the wall because I think it would add just a little more quality to project (especially since we have slightly textured drywall.)

I’m also not a real fan of mdf, but it is affordable and easy to work with so that is what we went with this time!

I painted the ceiling too! The swine woodwork is going to drive me crazy.

What’s next?

I have to go back to Home Depot to get another chunk of mdf for the top piece of molding in the corner by the door.

We need to fill the nail holes, caulk the seams and paint the “board and batten” part of the wall and the woodwork (NO! MORE! SWINE!) all a nice shade of white. I think the end result of this project is going to be great, but right now it all looks a bit rough and the pink/blue combo is not good. Sometimes things look worse before they look better! (right?)

 

The other side of the room

EW! This side of the room is pure chaos to my eyes. I can barely look at it.

Half swine, half blue and LOTS of mess. BAH! That combo pretty much makes me nauseous!

I haven’t decided yet if I’ll continue the board and batten around the cabinet walls or not.  I need to rip off the “side/back splash” and do a little bit of work to cut the battens around the counter, but it could be done if I decide to go that route.

UPDATE! Want to see what we did with that side of the wall? 

The step by step backsplash can be found in my faux tin ceiling tile back splash tutorial!

The toilet/tub room

Annnnnnd, more swine walls that need to be painted. I have been debating what color to paint this little adjoining toilet/shower room, but after seeing how bright the blue is in the other side of the room (even though I love the color), I think I’ll paint this little room a pleasant shade of white to keep things from being TOO BLUE.  See the swine?  It.never.ends, I’m telling you. Swine is going to be the death of me.

This is where I reveal that I am a dork….

When I posted about the blue color of this bathroom, I actually told you all THE WRONG COLOR!

{………crickets…………}

I can’t believe I did that.

But you know how when you have a million samples of blue strewn about and they all kind of look the same and your mind fogs over and you can’t even remember your name let alone the name of the paint samples? And then you grab one that looks like it and like a crazy woman you write a whole post about that color?

No?

Long story short, I gave out the wrong paint color.

The one I mentioned was a lovely one, though, so those of you who went out to buy it (yes, I did hear from people who did that!) I’m sure hope you will love it. Gah, so sorry!

This wall paint is actually called Lagoon by Martha Stewart. You can find the paint at Home Depot, where all of my supplies have come from so far for this project!

And now I duck my head and promise to always double check my paint can before I talk about my paint colors.

 Don’t forget to check out the AFTER post on this bathroom right here!

Three cheers for Home Depot!

A great big thank you to HOME DEPOT for the gift card to help us get started on these fun bathroom projects!

More progress reports to come! Hopefully things will start coming together!

 

{I’m adding my post to Get Your Craft On at Today’s Creative Blog!}

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