Batten and Board

 

We’re finished with the hallway – and if you can get excited about a hallway… we sure are!

 

                                  

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                        

 

 

Here is a shot of the hallway after I primed over the dark yellow paint– I think it’s kind of neat to see the wind blowing the curtain here, but look how boring the hallway was…

 

                    

 

Until now!  Hello batten and board!

 

                                            

 

 

After I primed the walls, we decided how high we wanted the top trim piece to be. Glenn and I measured the distance and marked it off with a pencil line on the wall.  I painted the upper portion first.  Next I painted the bottom part of the wall with the trim color I’m using throughout the house – the same as what is on the stairs and the front door.  It’s called Crisp Linen and I chose it over several trim colors grouped in the paint department at Lowe’s because it’s a warmish white. 

After he put up the top trim piece, Glenn cut each piece of MDF board the 3 inch width we wanted to use for the long boards and we leaned them up against the wall to see how far we wanted to space them.  I’ve read that the spacing is typically anywhere from 12-18 inches.  Because of the length of the hallway, ours were the most evenly spaced at 19 inches apart. 

 

                  

Then I primed each board – there were 11 total for the whole hallway – as well as the trim pieces we used for the ledge and the slender mold piece between the top edge to where it meets the flat side. That curved trim helps smooth the transition from the upper ledge of the trim to its face so the whole piece looks smoother and curvy, less angled and abrupt.  Don’t have a close up, but hopefully you get the idea.

Here are the vertical boards, right after I painted 2 coats of the trim paint over the primer. I painted the edges first, and then the top.  It was fast – since we were outside they dried quickly.

 

                            

 

Glenn and I took them inside and held them up to the pencil markings on the wall he had made for each one – 19 inches apart- held the level next to them to make sure they were straight, and then used the nail gun to secure them. 

That was it for the night, but the next day Glenn used wood filler to fill in the nail holes, then sanded them lightly and I touched them up with the paint.  He also used a type of caulk that helped hide any little cracks between our curvy drywall-over-plaster walls. 

Later, the plan is to put hooks along the top of the trim for coats, since we don’t have a coat closet and we have lots of friends!  Picture your coat right there…  And along the upper wall, we’ll put a few family pictures.  But for now – we think the hallway is beautifully changed and the wainscoting adds a lovely architectural feature that suits the house.

You know how I like white trim – and many of you have predicted (rightly so) that I would do a lot of painting at Kenilworth since there is an abundance of stained trim.   Most batten and board images I’ve seen have a painted baseboard – but we’re trying to see how it looks to mix some painted trim with the beautifully stained trim that is already there.  We are very happy with how it turned out and decided that for now – it’s staying the way it is!  Can you believe it?