Board and Batten and A Little Construction

It’s been very busy around my house the past few weeks. 

Does anyone else have a room in their house that they just don’t like? I do. Since I moved to this house I never could stand the look of the main floor family room.  It’s a big room and definitely has potential, but I hate the way my furniture looks in it. I have no walls.

One wall is all window, two other walls have room entrances and one wall is taken up by the TV. Not a great layout.

So instead of grumbling to myself any time I walk by that room, I decided to do something about it.

So here is my no-wall room before.

I took these pictures just before we started construction, so it’s in a bit of disarray already. You can see this angle from the entrance way.  Having this break in the wall actually made my entry seem smaller that it really was.  Company would crowd all around that little carpet area rather than walk a few steps in.

 

Here is another angle of the same room

What I need is a wall to put furniture against, so that my furniture isn’t in the middle of the room.  (What I really need is new furniture, but we won’t go there.)

So here is where the construction begins.

I must make mention here .. ahem.. that I, yes I did all my own taping and mudding of this drywall work.  Mr. Charming worked his magic putting up the wall, but I taped it. Ok, enough tooting my own horn. (toot)

A new day, with new sunshine. Don’t forget the very important job of priming bare drywall before you paint it.

So now that the wall is up, the board and batten commences.

Lets look at some before pictures. The baseboards have already been pulled off in this hallway.

Since my walls were in good shape, (although not always straight) The walls were painted white first and then strips of MDF were added in the chosen pattern.

After all the boards are up, its time to caulk all the joins and gaps.

After the caulking is dry, sanding is the dirtiest but most important job. Sand down any uneven joins with a power sander until it feels completely smooth.  I also went over all the straight edges with a sanding sponge just to make sure everything was completely smooth and no traces of caulking was left behind.

After sanding and wiping everything down free from dust.  Paint the entire thing all over again, including the walls you previously painted white.  You may need 2 or 3 coats.

I’m including this picture below because we started up the stairs before I painted the walls white.. and I’m here to tell ya… DON’T.  Paint them white first. It’s a lot less trouble.

So now lets take a closer before and after look.

The stairway went from this,

to this

The hallway went from this,

to this.

For more info on the wall hangings go to my previous post HERE.

The entry went from this,

to this.

This allows the room on the other side much more space to properly place furniture. You can see that the new wall has made my entrance seem so much larger too.

No wall hangings here yet.

As for the room on the other side of this wall… well that’s a post for another day!

 

ahhh.. now I can sit in my new room WITH walls and stare at my other walls.

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