Ugly butter color.
I think he was getting ready to jump...he LOVES projects:)
The first thing I did was paint the bottom (about 4' 5" up the wall) "Swiss Coffee" by Behr. It's a semi-gloss finish so that it can be washed should something get on it and it's a great finish when working on any trim. The great thing was that the top line of the white didn't need to be perfect because it was going to be covered with board.
After painting the bottom white, I painted the rest of the wall a light tan color. (The second picture is a better representation of the color.) It's also a Behr paint called Gobi Desert in an eggshell finish.
Once everything was painted, I measured each of the walls on the horizontal line where the paint met. I took these measurements and had the wonderful people at Lowes cut them! I bought 3 pieces of primed MDF board that were 12' X 5 1/2" and 1 piece that was 8' X 5 1/2". I then bought a piece of unprimed 4x8 MDF board and had them cut it into 32 pieces measuring 4'X2" each. ( I knew I needed that many boards because I did some measuring before I went.) I saved a ton of money by buying the whole sheet rather than buying them individually. A great resource for this project is
http://www.thenester.com/2010/05/board-and-batten.html. I basically copied her room:)
I also had the guys at Lowes cut me two pieces that were 12 inches long. This allowed me to space out my boards without having to measure each time. It's also really helpful to start wherever there is an outlet or window and to not be too strict with the 12 inch rule. Some of my boards are a little more or a little less than 12 inches.
I taped the boards so that I would be able to change things around should I get to the end and it not look right. I also had to track down a friend who would let me use their nail gun. I put about 4 nails in each board.
So excited to get started!!
As you can see, the room was quite a mess! Here's a tip: shut the door when your hubby is home and he won't freak out!
After the vertical boards were all up, I started putting the horizontal boards on top. When I held them up with my hands I realized that because the boards had detail at the top they didn't match at the corners. Because I don't have my own table saw and because I am not a gifted trimmer, I went back to Lowes to have them cut new boards! I found boards of the same size that were completely rectangular and used those instead. This was about $50, but well worth it!
I used a combination of nail glue (for trim) and the nail gun. The nails I used were 2 1/2 inches long and fit the gun I was borrowing. I didn't worry about finding the studs on the wall because not only were they going really deep into the wall, but I was using the nail glue. The only thing about using the nail gun is that you have to go back and spackle all the holes.
(Getting annoyed with spackling!)
Once you spackle all the holes, you have to go back and sand them down so that there isn't spackle on the board. (tip: vacuum the walls and around the floor before painting. It's also a good idea to wipe them off with a damp cloth.) I then painted one coat of paint. This helped to fill in most of the cracks between the boards and the walls. Once that paint was dry, I used white paintable (only get paintable) caulk to fill in the gaps and painted a final coat. A great resource for spackling and caulking is :
http://thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/search/label/office. She has some great ideas for other projects as well!
Here are some finished shots:
I'm still figuring out if I like the quilt, but I'm really happy with the way the room turned out. It's soft, neutral colors but it has a lot of potential when you bring in accents.
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