The Mudroom - Board and Batten

So as you recall from yesterday's post, taking down the wallpaper in the mudroom was nothing short of a nightmare.  After spending all day Saturday taking down the wallpaper, we spent the first half of Sunday repairing the damaged walls.

Next step was finalizing the paint color.  I knew I wanted a grey...but there are so many different grey shades to choose from.

While I remained undecided on the paint color it was time to start the board and batten treatment.  Yes, finally the fun part...or so I thought.  We started by removing the existing baseboard.  Easy.

We were following the tutorial from Centsational Girl.  I had bought all of the wood and had it cut to size a week or so ago from our local hardware store.  We took the wood for the top and did a test run to see how it fit.  It fit fine with one major problem...apparently that wall in our mudroom is not straight...AT ALL.

I mean there is a bow in the wall that spanned over 22" and was deep enough that you could fit all of your fingers behind it.  Houston ... we have a problem.  This was not a little bit of space that you could caulk.

To make matters worse, I was planning on having a piece of wood on top to act as a shelf.  Even if we could nail the top piece into the wall, the space was extremely obvious once we put on the shelf.  In addition, my husband and I both hated the paint colors on the wall (it reminded us of the color of our garage floor).  This project was just not going smoothly.  I was ready to give up.  In fact, at that point I left to go get more paint samples from Home Depot and to stop by Sherwin Williams to look at wallpaper.  I figured this was not meant to be and I might as well just re-wallpaper.  I got into the car and was halfway to Home Depot when it hit me that I had also purchased a cove moulding that I was going to put below the shelf.  Why not just use the cove molding on top...that would hide the giant gap.  I called my husband and told him my solution which he agreed would work.  We were back on track.

I must say from that point forward things started to really head in the right direction.  The only problem at this point was that it was 3:30pm on Sunday...I really don't like to start major projects that late, but the house was a disaster and we really needed to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

We followed the directions from Centsational Girl and we cut the battens to size every 15".

We also had two more colors on the wall...this time we had a winner...Silver Screen from Behr (Home Depot).  I bought the paint with primer since the walls weren't 100% perfect.  That turned out to be a great decision.  The paint coverage was awesome allowing us to use only one coat.

At 11pm Sunday evening, the project was complete.  Finally I was up to the fun stuff...the decorating.  In the next few days I will share with you what I have done - I can't wait to add all of the accessories and "fun stuff".  The board and batten was truly easy, once we dealt with the bowed wall issue.  Thanks to Centsational Girl for such an awesome tutorial.  Please let me know what you think.  I just love how it came out.

What a difference!

Don't forget to stop back this evening at 8pm EST when the link party opens up.  I can't wait to see what you have been working on.

-Judy