Adding board and batten to our entryway was something we planned on doing before our house was even finished. HA! I knew that with a good amount of research, we could accomplish the project relatively quickly without spending boat loads of money and that it would add a lot of character to our home. Other projects got in the way, however, so it wasn’t until last weekend that we decided to tackle this one.

We researched and looked at many pictures of board and batten to determine what route we wanted to go with the materials. Board and batten can be done really inexpensively using furring strips but we thought it would take some more time and wouldn’t give us the smooth finish we were aiming for. We decided to use 1/2″ MDF and add our own touches to it with some trim and a little “shelf” around the top. We love the way it turned out and I’m so excited to be sharing how you can do it to your own home too!

Did I mention this project cost us less than $100?! I had to double check the numbers to make sure because I can’t believe we were able to do this in under $100… AND we had material left over that we’re going to use on some other projects. WHAT?!

I thought a lot about the best way to explain this tutorial with you all because I know that all spaces are going to be different sizes. To make it easiest to understand, I’m just going to share the general way we did this and avoid sharing all of the specific numbers for our space (weird corner sizes, etc.). If you have any questions please let us know!

What you’ll need:

• 1/2″ 4′ x 8′ MDF – we purchased 2 of these
  • We had the boards stripped down at Home Depot and then Stephen cut them length wise at home. Something I wish I would’ve done is said something about the saw blade to the guy at Home Depot. I think it was pretty dull because the boards were “frayed” a bit on the edges. It wasn’t life or death but I did have to sand the edges of each strip before we applied it to the wall because of it… Boo. Each cut at Home Depot is $0.25 but for like $5.00 total it was so worth it.
    • 4 – 6″ top horizontal strips (I say top because it was the one right under the “shelf” and trim)
    • 4 – 4″ middle horizontal strips (this was actually an accident by the Home Depot guy… We asked for 3″ but hey! The 4 looks great!)
    • 4 – 2″ for the “shelf” to sit on top of the 6″ piece
    • Remaining MDF – 3″ vertical strips (I think it ended up being like 15 strips but don’t quote me on that)
• 5/8″ x 1 5/8″ Primed Pine Shingle – we purchased 2 of these
• Paint – we painted ours using Valspar Signature Ultra White, satin finish
• Paint brush and roller
• 18 gauge nail gun + air compressor
• Miter saw
• Sanding block
• Level
• Pencil
• Caulk + caulk gun
• Wood glue
• Spackling putty – this is my favorite
• Wood filler/joint compound (I used joint compound because I had some on hand from this project and it worked great but wood filler would too!)

How to do it:

• I would 100% suggest taping off your area with painters tape before you buy any materials. Like I said, everyone’s measurements will be different so you might not even need 2 boards of MDF like we did! Double, triple, quadruple check all of the math.
• Get all of your supplies, MDF stripped down, etc. and get this party started!
• Apply all of the horizontal 6″ boards to the walls (from the top of the 6″ board to the start of our existing base board was 59-3/4″).
  • Cut the 6″ board to length.
    • For our space the MDF was not long enough so we had to connect multiple pieces together.
    • Cut the corner pieces at 45 degree angles.
  • Apply wood glue to the back of the MDF strip.
  • Place the board on the wall and double check it is placed where you want it and THAT IT IS LEVEL.
  • Nail the board to the wall using the nail gun.
  • Repeat until all of the 6″ horizontal boards are on the walls.

• Add the 3″ vertical strips to the “edges” of the walls.
  • Cut the 3″ MDF to length.
  • Apply wood glue to the back of the MDF strip.
  • Place the board on the wall and double check that it is placed where you want it (try to make the gap between the 6″ board and 3″ board as small as possible of course) and THAT IT IS LEVEL.
  • Nail the board to the wall using the nail gun.
  • Repeat until all of the edges of the walls have vertical boards.

• Add the 4″ horizontal strip to the middle. Ours is 13-3/4″ inches between the bottom of the 6″ piece and the top of the 4″ piece.
  • Cut the 4″ MDF to length.
  • Apply wood glue to the back of the MDF strip.
  • Place the board on the wall and double check that it is placed where you want it (try to make the gap between the 3″ vertical board and this board as small as possible) and THAT IT IS LEVEL.
  • Nail the board to the wall using the nail gun.
  • Repeat until all of the 4″ horizontal boards are up.
• Now it’s time for a cutting marathon… Add the 3″ vertical pieces between the 6″ and 4″ boards and the 4″ boards and the base board/floor.
  • Cut the 3″ MDF to length – for reference, the piece between the bottom of the 6″ horizontal board and the top of the 4″ horizontal board was 13-3/4″ for us. The piece between the bottom of the 4″ horizontal board and the top of our base boards was 36″.
  • Apply wood glue to the back of the MDF strip.
  • Place the board on the wall and double check that it is placed where you want it and THAT IT IS LEVEL.
  • Nail the board to the wall using the nail gun.
  • Repeat until all of the 3″ vertical boards are up.
• Add the 2″ “shelf” on top of the 6″ horizontal board.
  • Cut the 2″ piece to length.
  • Place the 2″ board on top of the 6″ board and double check THAT IT IS LEVEL.
  • Nail straight down into the 6″ board.
• Add the trim pieces between the 2″ “shelf” and the 6″ horizontal board.
• You should be getting excited by now!!! Fill in all of the nail gun holes with wood filler or DAP DryDex (what I prefer).
• Fill in the gaps between the boards using joint compound or wood filler.
  • To make this process so much faster, I filled a few gaps at a time and then would go back to the first one I did and would scrape off the excess putty while it was still damp. This made it so that I barely had to do any sanding the following day.

• Sand all of the nail holes and gaps so that it is all seamless.

• Vacuum/wipe down the entire area to remove any dust.
• Caulk all of the edges between the boards and the walls. I wish this wasn’t necessary but I tested it out and it was a no-go. Caulk fills in the shadows so that once everything is painted, you don’t see gaps between the walls and the boards. Let it dry overnight. If you’re painting your board and batten a dark color, this might not be necessary!
  • Caulking takes a bit of practice and can get pretty messy quick so there are a few things that can help:
    • You can get a handy little tool at the hardware store that makes smoothing caulk lines but easier. I just use my finger. If that’s the case, make sure to keep a clean towel nearby to wipe off any excess caulk that comes off when smoothing the line. You can do it!!!!

• Tape off the walls so that you don’t get paint in places you don’t want it.

• Paint!!! Our paint had a primer in it but if you’re not using a 2-in-1 type of thing, I would highly suggest priming the area first. It took about 2.5 coats to completely cover everything.
• ENJOY!!!! We hope you love your transformed space as much as we love ours!

FAQs that I’m anticipating:

How did you determine how wide to make the space between the boards?

• We did the math by putting a vertical board on each end of the wall and then determining how many could we fit in between them while liking the way it looked of course. For us, that meant we had 7 vertical boards total on the main wall in our foyer: 2 on the ends and 5 evenly spaced in between them. Like I said, tape off your space first!! I was able to visualize our space with the tape and it helped tremendously.

Did you remove your existing base board trim?

• Nope. We left it as is. Some people remove it so that they can take the board and batten all the way to the ground but we didn’t want to do that.

Since you kept the base boards did you cut the board and batten at an angle or just straight across at the bottom where it met up with the trim?

• We kept it straight across. I’ve seen it cut at a 45 degree angle but I personally don’t like the way that looks as much.

What about weird spaces that are too small to fit an entire board and batten section?

• We had this problem by the door. The spaces on each side are smaller than the width that was between our boards on the full wall with the bench if that makes sense… So we just put a board on each end and let the width between them be what it would be. It’s barely noticeable especially once painted!

What did you do with the spaces that were too small to have any boards at all?

• For those we just added the 4″ horizontal board and no vertical boards. It looks a bit funky before it’s painted but once it’s all the same color it looks great!

How did you know what to fill and what to caulk?

• I filled all nail holes and gaps between boards. I caulked any spaces between the boards and the wall and also caulked the corners so that there weren’t any gaps.

That was a lot of information! Let us know if you have any questions!

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