Board and Batten Down the Hatches

Here is the family room with newly gray walls in the sunlight.

The color looks good with the white door frames and vents, which will work nicely with the board and batten that we planned to install and paint a nice, shiny pure white.  We wanted to add some architectural interest to the room, but keep it casual, simple, and wipe-able due to the crazy exploits of our four monkeys (and hopefully kids down the road).

Randy and I used Mandi's post on Vintage Revivals as our board and batten tutorial.  I won't pretend we really knew what we were doing, we just followed her very straight-forward instructions.  We used MDF board instead of wood at Mandi's suggestion.  Home Depot cut our MDF boards into 3-inch-wide planks.  When we returned home, we were welcomed by this sight in the foyer.  Which one of these things is not like the other?

Randy and I started installing the pieces.  Yes, we had to use a hammer because our nail gun crapped out...  and we learned that Randy doesn't have a lot of patience for the set-backs that are the joys of DYI.

We used our level to make sure everything was nice and straight.  Then my friend Becky and I spackled the edges where the planks came together for a seamless look.

After we sanded, it was nice and smooth, like a baby's posterior.  I also spackled my nail holes and sanded those too.  I knew from previous experience that caulk shrinks and you have to go back and cover up all your little nail holes TWICE, and I just don't have the patience for that.  One of these days when we tackle the living room, I will do another round of caulk in the molding I put up around the windows.  Hopefully I can just fill them in with spackle!

Randy went around the room installing the boards.  Becky and I would help with with the level and to get the first couple of nails in, and he'd finish each one off.  Then we followed him around the room spackling and sanding. Don't let us fool you...  this took a long time!  Several days since we are not professional DYIers (our bosses expected us back at work Monday morning).

Whenever there was something in the way, we just board-and-battened around it.  Is that a verb?  We kept our boards the same distance apart from one another and ended up with some funny cut-outs like this.  I figure it adds character to the room.

We tried the nail gun again several times.  To no avail.  RIP nail gun.  You were great while you lasted.

I went around and sanded all the edges, so we didn't have any hard right angles to smack ourselves on. We're quite accident-prone around here.  Well, actually that's just me!  I used a nice hand-held sanding thing that looks like a fondant smoother, but with high grit sand paper, not smooth plastic, on the other side.

Then we were all done!  Doesn't it look great?

Just kidding!

We put the curtains back up to prevent them from being cat-nap bedding and getting more furred-up than they already are, but we still have plenty more to do.

So anyone know what the sanding thing is called?  I don't think it's a sanding block because it wasn't actually a block.  It was a nice purple, ergo-nomic-handled plane with sandpaper fasters.  There was also this nice, smushy layer of like non-skid padding between the sandpaper and the sander-thingie.  It was definitely worth the $7 I spent on it!  Now that's sandpaper luxury.