DIY Full-Wall Vertical Board & Batten

My friend, Lisa, reached out to me with a vision she had for her master bedroom. This is what she sent me…

She had already painted an accent wall in her master bedroom black, and she wanted to see if Stephen could put the vertical boards down the full wall. Here is what her room looked like originally…

Of course, Stephen was happy to help. He went by her house to do the measuring on her 12-foot tall walls. He had to carefully pay attention to the measurements of the slanted part of the wall on the left to make sure he made the appropriate angled cuts. Not only did he have to measure how tall each piece needed to be, but he needed to figure out the appropriate spacing so that the boards were all equal.

He went and purchased fourteen 1×3 pieces of wood in 12 foot increments. He put a 1×3 on either end of the wall to begin with. He then measured the rest of the wall, which was 216″. Here is some math for you, in case you’re interested in how to figure out the placement of the boards. (Skip the next paragraph if math gives you a headache ;))

The 1×3 boards actually measure 2.5″ in width. Since the wall was 216″ (18 feet) in total, and the boards on the left and right of the walls took up 5″ total of wall space, that left 211″ of blank wall. The rest of the 12 boards would take up a total of 30″ of wall space (2.5″ x 12), so he subtracted 211-30 (total: 181″) to figure out how much empty wall space would be left. There would be 13 blank spaces of wall between the 14 total boards, so he divided 181 by 13, which was right at 14″. Whew! So, he measured 14″ after the first board on the side, put up the next board, and continued until the boards completed the whole wall.

Lisa didn’t want to remove or paint the crown moulding, so the boards hung over the baseboards some. You can get around this by cutting the bottom of the boards at an angle so that the board is the same width as the baseboard.

He made the necessary cuts, painted them black, and then nail-gunned them into place!

Here’s the *almost* final product… (just needs one more coat of paint!)

I don’t have a completed, room-put-back-together picture yet, but I wanted to share what he did. The room looks so good with this dark accent wall!