Board & Batten Walls in MBR

Hey there!  I linked our master bedroom furniture before & after to Evolution of Style link party yesterday and realized that I never posted about the wall treatment.

before

after

 
So...here it is FINALLY!  After lots & lots of research I decided that I loved the look of crisp white board & batten wall treatments. 

I used several blogs for inspiration:
 It's the little things that make a house a home
The Yellow Cape Cod     
The Nester

I enlisted my husband to help me with this one.  It was a big project as our bedroom is a good size with an attached sitting room.  We took lots of measurements.  With our notes in hand off to the store we went.  We wanted to keep the costs down and had read that home improvement stores will "rip" the plywood down for you into boards to save us a major step in the process.   Unfortunately, our local Lowes was not able to rip the plywood down for us.  :(

But I was not about to give up so we went a little farther down the highway to Home Depot.  We found a willing employee to help our worthy cause little home improvement project.

As the very kind man in Home Depot continued to cut & stack our boards my dear husband began frantically rechecking our calculations.  Then told him to stop cutting as we had enough boards to cut.  Apparently, we were really "off" on our measurements and had lots of left over wood.

No problem after seeing our completed room our neighbors were inspired to do the same wall treatment in their laundry room and they had all the wood they needed sitting in our garagae...ha ha ha!

We painted the top 1/4 of the walls & the ceiling Benjamin Moore Coventry Gray.

Before we starting hanging the boards in the room.  I sanded & primed all the boards in my garage.  Since we were being cheap Cents-able and using plywood it was pretty rough.

There wasn't much exact measuring involved here.  We were lazy eager and didn't want to waste time with a lot of cutting around outlets and light switches.  We simply lined the boards along each wall  to determine the spacing we needed for each wall.

We used  1/2 inch thick plywood on vertical boards and precut 3/4 inch boards for the horizontal pieces.  We used our nail gun & liquid nails to attach all the boards to the walls. 

Not all the boards lined up perfectly...

..but a little wood putty & caulk will help with that!

 Once all the boards were up.  I was ready to paint and get it done!  But my husband insisted that we caulk all the seams.  What!?!  I asked on both sides of each & every board???  Yup...that's exactly what he meant.   I wanted to just be done at that point but he was right!!!  It made it look so much more finished with the caulking.

Once all the boards were up & caulked I painted with a white semi gloss paint.  And again the final results.  LOVE it!  It was a lot of work but it brightened the room and gave it a lot of character.

  
Between painting the furniture black & adding the board & batten it feels like a different space!

Master Bedroom Furniture Make Over

I blogged about our master bedroom makeover here.  Way...way...way back then I said I'd post exactly how I refinished our bedroom furniture. As you know if you are reading my blog now I failed to continue posting regularly.  But I'm back!

We bought our furniture about 15 years ago.  It's made of pine by Broyhill so it's decent furniture...but it had an orange colored stain on it....yuck!  We really didn't want to spend the money on new.  We are cheap like that..hate to spend money on furniture would much rather take the kids to Disney. :)

Here are the before & after pictures...

before

after

It was a lot of work but the finished product was so worth it!  Here are some more pictures of the before pieces I refinished.   As you can see the lovely orange finish.  And lots of knots because of the pine wood.

 

 First I gave all the pieces a good cleaning.  Good thing I did that first...can you see the layer of dust on my dresser...gross!!!  Then I primed all the furniture using Zinnser cover stain.  I used a foam roller & 2 inch angled brush to apply the primer.  I also added Penetrol to the primer.  I did not want to have to sand all that furniture so I found that if I used this primer I could skip that labor intensive step.

I applied two coats of primer and lightly sanded between each coat. 

I decided to use an oil based paint for it's durability.  I didn't take a picture of that paint can & of course there is paint all over the outside of the can so I can't read it...sorry!  But I got it at Ace Hardware.  It's an oil based paint in black.  Bought it right off the shelf.  When I explained what I was doing to the nice people at Ace this is that paint they recommended.  I have to say it wasn't the easiest to work with.  Oil paint is messy.  But I wanted a durable finish without having to put a glossy sealer on it.  I'm not particularly fond of high sheen furniture.  I did two coats of black paint on all the furniture.  I also added the Penetrol to the black paint.

I also decided to refinish the hardware or "wood knobs".  After pricing new hardware I decided it wasn't very "Cents-able".  So I found spray paint that was suppose to resemble metal.  I gave each knob a nice coat of primer then sprayed them with Rustoleum Hammered. 

 

This is how the spray painted wood knobs look back on the painted furniture.

There you have it...how I refinished our furniture.  I won't lie to you...it took lots of time.  The painting was time consuming...all those drawers.  And I had to wait at least overnight between each coat of primer & each coat of paint.  Oil paint takes a LONG time to dry.  I may try latex paint on my next project.  But honestly we couldn't be happier with the results.  And just because I love before & after pictures here they are again.

before

after

I'll post the "how-to" on the wall treatment this week...I promise!  Hope you come back & take a look at that!!
Enjoy the rest of your weekend.



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