Batten & Board Prep

For the bedroom, husband and I have been oogling batten and board as a possible wall treatment. We both like how it's equally rustic and chic, casual and elegant and how it would harmonize with the existing architectural features.

Here's how other bloggers have tackled this project:
The Casabella Project
House of Smiths
Pancakes and French Fries
It's the little things
etc.

Technically, we're not really doing a batten and board treatment on the walls. We're skipping the board part, just adding the battens which were traditionally used to cover the seams between the boards, and calling it a day. So, here's what the bedroom looked at the beginning of the project:

[Before ... or is it In-progress? Master Bedroom freshly painted]

We divided the walls in our bedroom on the same height as the window sashes, painting the lower, bigger half in Behr's Ultra Pure White in semi-gloss and the upper half in Valspar's Shaded Lake.
One of the bloggers recommended furring strips for this project and since they fit the bill (cheap and easy) that's what I picked up: several 1x2s and 1x4s. They are raw wood and of course needed to be primed and painted. I chose to prime first, then install and finish painting them along with giving the walls their second coat.

Let the priming begin! Here the boards are laid out in the Masterbathroom. The 1x4s are already primed, the 1x2s are in progress. In order to save time priming them on three sides I simply scooched them together into a tight bundle which allowed me to prime whichever side I was priming on all of them in one fell swoop!

All primed! Stay tuned for Batten & Board: part two of the Saga!