Batten down the hatches!

Over the weekend I continued my faux batten and board treatment in the Master bedroom. The husband was off camping with the little man at the Greater Jacksonville Camp Out enjoying some quality man-to-man time while I got to mess around at our Duckling house scot free!

No, I didn't paint anything in forbidden colors aka colors not mutually agreed upon or get a head start on flooring the laundry or the dressing room since negotiations are still on-going. Nooo! I got the big girl pants and the tools and continued working on the batten and board in our bedroom.

Ingredients:

• furring strips
• liquid nails
• brats
• paintable caulk

[In-progress: Chair rail is up]

First I installed the chair rail part. I measure each piece, cut it and after spreading a decent amount of liquid nail on the back put it in place using a level to make sure that each board is, well, level. Nope, I didn't bother with mitered corners. I simply butted the edges and caulked right over it. I know, I know, it's not that hard and I promise I'll get to mastering mitered corners soon. I did, however, miter the bottom corners of each batten so they wouldn't jut out so much from the base board.

[Applying liquid nails]

This was really the super easy part even though I discovered that either it was measuring with the Little Man or my difficulty with anything non-metric that caused me to end up with a 3 foo gap. I guess one trip to the blue box is in order.

After that I started with adding the battens to the trickiest part of one of the walls: tucked between the door and a window there is a light switch and an outlet. I decided that the spacing between my battens needed to be based on what worked for this part.

[In-progress: battens in place]

After I'd positioned those first two starting battens I used a piece of board to help space the battens in the correct distance from each other. There are a few spaces where I had to veer from that first course, tweaking the distance a bit so it corresponds better with the architectural features (doors, windows, etc) in the room than slavishly following a set measurement. It looks much more balanced that way. I caulked along the seams between the rail and the battens and everything is now ready for paint!

That is if I can make up my mind whether I want to add short battens underneath the windows ... What do you think?