Board and Batten Hallway Design Board

In the summer of 2010, I overcame my fear of power tools put up board and batten in our living room. It was life changing. Ok, so life changing is an exaggeration, but it was room changing. I love looking back at my old posts on HGTV’s Rate My Space and seeing how our home has evolved since 2007. Over the past few years, our home has gone from being dark, masculine and traditional to being lighter, brighter and more of the vintage-classic design that I’ve grown to adore.

If you’re not familiar with board and batten, it is a series of evenly spaced strips of wood that can extend at chair rail height (about 1/3 up the wall), picture height (about 3/4 up the wall), or all the way to the ceiling. I prefer East Coast Creative’s definition: “Really awesome molding that is sort of chunky, with clean lines, and is arranged in fun rectangular shapes.”

In this picture of our living room, I pointed out where the board and batten ends and our hallway begins. My plans for the hallway redesign include extending the board and batten wall treatment all the way down the hall.

Here is our hallway in all of its 1990’s brassy-knob glory. It’s not horrible, but it could use some updating and character.

I found my inspiration from one of my all-time favorite blogs, The Lettered Cottage. Wainscoting and grasscloth…be still my heart.

via The Lettered Cottage ; 

I came up with a design board to show you how I’ll take my inspiration and use it for our hallway redesign.

1. Instead of the single shelf that holds our family photos, I’m going to make two knock-offs of Pottery Barn’s Holman picture ledge using Ana White’s instructions for making ten dollar ledges.

Pottery Barn Holman Ledge2. I am replacing the track light with the small Carriage Light Chandelier from Ballard Designs. I was able to buy it on sale for 20% off and scored free shipping on top of that!

Ballard Designs Carriage House Small Chandelier

3. My apologies to all of you Wallpaper Haters, but it’s going up…do or die. I’ve always loved the texture that grasscloth gives a room. The board and batten will extend 4 1/2 feet up the wall and this grass cloth wallpaper will go above it.

Mandarin Fantasy Grasscloth MFP-565

4. On the left side of the hallway, there is a 28″ x 23″ HVAC intake. I’m wanting to use the open frame cabinet door tutorial by Brittany of Pretty Handy Girl to make a cover for the HVAC intake, but it will be one door instead of two. This gives me a good excuse to finally buy a Kreg Jig!

5. I considered spray painting the brass knobs and hinges but changed my mind after trying to take off one of the knobs. They are nearly impossible to remove without damaging them. I found a supplier on Ebay that sells knobs and hinges in oil rubbed bronze for a pretty fair price.

ORB knobs from Ebuilder Direct on Ebay

6. I still haven’t decided on a runner, but I like the Belgrado Ikat Rug from Ballard Designs. I’ve purchased their indoor/outdoor rugs before and I like being able to clean them with a hose in the driveway. Unfortunately, since I put this design board together, the runner is no longer available in beige. 🙁

Belgrado Rug from Ballard Designs

If you know of a good replacement for the runner I had picked out, I’d be ever so grateful!

So now that I’ve shown you the design board for our hallway, I need to get busy working! I know there’s a ton of tutorials for board and batten on the internet, but I have some tricks that I learned from the last time I put it up. I’ll be sharing those with you soon!

Want to see the finished hallway? Click this link for the board and batten hallway reveal!