Simply Beautiful By Angela

creating simple beauty on a budget

The Great Board and Batten Debate…

Happy Friday everyone! We made it through another week 🙂

On Monday when I shared the breakfast bar stools makeover, I mentioned that I plan on doing board and batten on the wall.

I took a trip to Lowes last Saturday to price it out. Which made my husband laugh because he knew that I was more than likely coming home with the wood. I totally proved him wrong though, I went home and slept on it and went back and got it on Sunday! :p

I purchased a 4′ x 8′ piece of oak plywood, 1/4″ thick for $30. I actually meant to get the maple that was $25 but their signs were confusing and I already had it cut down…ugh whatever.

I tried to have it cut into strips there, but the guy told me that their saw wouldn’t be the right type to do it and it would just end up tearing it into shreds. He seemed nice enough so I think he was telling the truth rather than getting out of going to the hassel of cutting strips.

Instead, I had him cut it down into 2′ x 4′ pieces so that it could fit into my car, and had the hubby cut each section into 3″ strips on his father’s table saw.

I was convinced that I was going to work on it all this week during the evening and it would just need a few finishing touches this weekend. Yeh, not!

I kept putting it off because I couldn’t figure out what I actually wanted to do. Ugh, the pain of my indecisivness!!

I originally picked out the thin plywood because I didn’t want there to be overhang on the vents that are on the wall. But theeeeeeen I saw this idea that made me realize I could just add some wood around the vent and actually be able to use thicker battens.

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So I debated. And debated. All week long!

I really like how the thick battens pop and add so much dimension to the space…

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But is it too much for a smaller space? It would also require me to buy new wood, and some more molding to put over the baseboards like I did in with my planked wall so that they don’t overhang.

I even started to toy around with covering the wall with plywood to do real board and batten and that really made my head start to hurt!

But then yesterday I finally started looking at some images of thin board and batten using 1/4″ plywood and I was pleasantly surprised.

I saved a few of inspiration photos (or just-stick-with-what-you-planned-Angela! photos).

This one is my favorite, don’t you just love the horizontal boards that create little squares?!

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I like how the thinner boards still add interest and make a noticeable difference to a space without being too overwhelming.

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I think I’m sold, peeps! After a week of debating and making my head spin I think I finally feel confident that using the thin boards is the most budget friendly and eye appealing choice for our breakfast bar.

I have a three day weekend to work on it, woo hoo!! I’ll be back on Tuesday with my progess or maybe even the reveal (I wouldn’t get your hopes up though! haha).

Comments

  2. Thank you! It has been really hard to choose, but now that I've gotten it up on the wall I think I'm very happy with my choice 🙂