Woke up this morning and really had to think about what day it was, is anyone else feeling like that? The days blur together but one of the perks of this extra home time is that we finished a project that I have been wanting to do for a while now! Don’t get me wrong, I actually don’t feel like we have all of the extra time that everyone is talking about. With working from home every day and no nanny, there is more to do than ever!

I have talked about the new accessory to Adorned Homes |Adorned At Home| for the last few weeks and today is the first real look into one of our recent projects in our own home. We conquered 2 walls in the dining area that needed some love and I have been so excited to share the deets with you all so grab your kale & lemon smoothie and lets talk accent walls!

I think the accent wall has been misused over the years. They were never meant to be the one interesting thing in the room and then the rest forgotten. The whole space should be styled, your eye should be brought around the room with different, interesting “moments” and the accent wall should be the “accent” to all of the other beautiful things in the space. I love when an accent wall is in an unexpected place. For example, in our current bedroom we have an accent wall that is in a corner with an armchair…the expected spot for an accent wall in a bedroom would be behind the bed. The other walls were not forgotten. There are switched wall lamps above each nightstand, a floating shelf above the headboard, floor to ceiling curtains on one wall, barn doors on the other wall and shiplap on the ceiling…little “moments” around the room.

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Ok, now that I’ve done some home schooling on accent walls, let’s get to the board & batten!

We recently used a stay at home weekend to install board & batten on the walls in our dining area directly off of our kitchen. This sun filled space had really light colored walls, very high ceilings and a bay window for a cozy seating area. The large room needed some dimension and more interest added to the walls to save it from feeling cavernous. A wall application would anchor the room and bring warmth to this large space. Floor to ceiling drapes were done in the living room to achieve this same result but we didn’t want to cover up our pretty new Marvin patio doors we installed last summer. {more about sewing custom drapes AND our Marvin Patio door reveal in the coming months!}

There are alot of things to consider when doing board & batten in an existing space. The main points being;

• Existing trim thickness. The board & batten should not be thicker than your window/door casings and base trim. We used 1″x1/4″ boards.
• Spacing between each board. It’s important to plan ahead so you don’t end up with a weird space at the end of the wall.
• How will it be attached. Will it be glued, nailed or both? Is there sturdy backing for the nails?
• Squareness of the ceiling. If the corner where the ceiling and wall meet up is wavy or not level, an accent like this will draw attention to that. To cheat it, we added a horizontal board along the top of the wall to create a straight edge for the boards to meet up to.

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For our board & batten, Dan nailed + glued the strips to the wall to avoid any movement. Once complete, all of the nail holes were filled with a sandable putty and the seams on the sides, top and bottom were filled with DAP. You can find the link to the DAP I most often use here. It’s paintable, flexible and works on multiple materials. And, yes, I say “I” because I am the one who does the filling, sanding and painting after Dan installs the woodwork in our projects! Filling holes is super tedious so bring your patience! Once the DAP dried, I finished it off with primer (just on the boards) and paint to match the existing wall color. Benjamin Moore “Sea Pearl” is the very subtle, taupe white that we used for the whole space, it is just slightly darker than our bright white woodwork and perfect for the neutral color palette.

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It has been so long since I have walked you all through the “how to” of a project. It feels good to go back to our roots! AND what brings us back even more is that we are going to be selling our first investment property that Dan purchased back in 2005! We fully renovated the one level home and then kept it as a rental property. Our 21 year old selves could have used online tutorials (or even a cell phone with internet) but miraculously we figured it all out! How time flies, A good thing to remember when we are stuck at home feeling like this may never end. It will end and it will become just a memory, a story to tell in the future.