The hardwood floors hit a hard stop. Jer and I had a few more things to work out with the board and batten. I originally hoped to create the board and batten with standard lumber available at Home Depot, but they had a very limited stock (maybe everyone had the same idea).
I wasn’t too worried about the limited stock since we have so many other lumber stores nearby, but then we realized that the lumber was too thick. When placed against our existing door trim, it looked a little ridiculous. Just take a little glance at the picture below. It would stick out way too far and scream DIY addition.
I didn’t really want to change the design because I was finally happy with it! So, we brainstormed a few solutions – should we remove the trim around the doors and beef it up? The other possibility was using MDF instead of lumber. This would require us to cut out every piece. I deliberated on it a few days and decided to move forward with the MDF boards. The trim throughout the house matches and I worried that changing the trim in one room would look out of place.
Another quirk of the dining room, it has textured walls. It’s hard to tell in pictures, but if you look closely you can see there are some slight variations in depths. It’s a quiet texture and it’s not very noticeable. Most tutorials of board and batten recommend just using the standard drywall as the backing (saves time and money). However, Frills and Drills decided to install boards behind the trim to eliminate the texture wall (highlight: Foyer Reno).
I originally hoped to do that, but after looking at them in person, I worried they were too thick. That would mean we’d need even thinner MDF boards for the rails and stiles which would result in less dimension. I worried the wall treatment would look too flat. Jer and I talked and he thought we should just use the textured wall since it’s so light and, hopefully, unnoticeable.
That, however, created a new item on the to-do list. The chair rail that was in the dining room was installed prior to the previous homeowners adding texture to the wall. So under it was super smooth drywall. In addition, it left a clear indentation of the chair rail around the entire room. I put in one of the photos I snapped when we first removed it and if you look closely you can see the line. The husband had to using joint compound to smooth it out. BUT it couldn’t be too smooth and look drastically different than the textured walls. Oye.
After three coats of joint compound…we have this. I think it’s close enough to the texture wall…but I may paint it white to see how well it blends in with everything prior to starting the install.
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