This week I am preping for next weekend’s painting marathon and board and batten installation at my house. When I first moved in I painted the downstairs bathroom, kitchen, master bedroom, and master bathroom. I wanted to paint the living room, but there wasn’t enough time. The living room isn’t terribly big, but whatever color goes in the living room also flows into the stairwell and up into the hallway on the second floor. There really just isn’t a good place to cut it off that wouldn’t leave an awkward transition to the stairs. So I’ve ended up leaving this giant space as the second to last “room” to paint in the house. (The only other room left is the guest bathroom up stairs.) Last summer I painted the guest room and the office. The other downside is that with every room I paint, I also have to paint the ceiling white as every square inch of this house was painted builder beige!

In addition to painting the living room, I am going to install a board and batten detail for the nook at my entry way. It is going to go here, below my refurbished window sash mirror.

I have looked at several tutorials on Pinterest to see which style of board and batten I wanted to install and the best installation methods from various bloggers. I love Ana White, she has great building plans for furniture with shopping lists, step by step instructions, and a lot of diagrams to go with the steps. Her tutorial on board and batten installation has helped me map out what I want to do on the wall.

I put together a very very rough mock-up of what the nook will look like with the new paint and the board and batten detail. I’ll definitely have to do a side by side comparison of this and the final product!

This weekend I went to Lowes to get most of my supplies, including 5 gallons of white paint, 5 gallons of wall paint, and all of the molding for the installation. There is a laundry list of things I need to accomplish after work this week in order to get the living room, stairwell, and upstairs hallway ready for painting next weekend:

• Remove all switch plate covers & caulk (Yes the builder caulked all switch plates)
• Cover any nail pops or fill in any holes from caulk removal
• Remove all picture frames from the walls
• Remove Blinds, Curtains, and Curtain Rod
• Move furniture and area rug
• Remove ceiling fan

As you can see from the ‘before’ pictures below, I have A LOT of picture frames to take down! I hope to post later next week with the ‘after’ results for both the paint and board and batten.