Twin Tuesday: A DIY Board and Batten Mud Room Update
By Dania In DaniaDania here. Three years ago my hubby Chad, and I built a new house. Even though we were able to design it ourselves, I’ve still managed to find a few things to ‘improve’ upon. One of the things that I have been thinking about for a while is our laundry room/mud room. It is the entry we use most often, right off the garage.
The room is small, and houses a washer and dryer. A couple of years ago, Chad built me a washer and dryer stand which elevated the machines, giving us much-needed laundry basket storage. There is a coat closet right next to the room, which served our purposes well until we had a child. Hanging a tiny coat, hat, and gloves in a coat closet while corralling a toddler is not efficient. Let’s be honest, most often his things ended up on the floor. I needed a solution, and came up with the idea of a board and batten coat rack.
Having never worked on a board and batten wall before, I enlisted the help of my husband, who can figure almost any construction project out with his mad math skills. (I don’t math.) If you are going to do board and batten, I would highly recommend anchoring all your vertical boards to a stud. This serves a dual purpose of ensuring the boards don’t fall off the wall, while also providing a perfect spacer to ensure your boards are the same distance apart from each other. We weren’t able to do this in the mud room. We were working with three walls, and the studs were in random spots on each of the tiny walls, which would have resulted in off centered boards and odd looking results.
Chad was concerned about putting up boards on a wall without anchoring them to studs. As a solution, we first put up our horizontal boards (1×6 pine boards), anchoring those to the studs in the wall.
We then positioned our vertical boards (1×4 pine boards). Again because of the small space and the three adjoining walls, this took some time to figure out correct spacing. I wanted the same amount of space between each board, while also having all three walls look centered and uniform.
Once I got the boards positioned correctly, we used liquid nails to secure the vertical boards to the wall, following that up with the nail gun, for good measure. I had Chad cut the bottom of the vertical boards at an angle, to meet up with our floor trim. He also angled the edges of the boards which met the adjoining wall at an odd angle. I think these small detail really adds a custom look. We also added a 1×4 pine board to the top, as a shelf.
Next, I worked on filling nail holes and caulking all seams. Then it was time to paint! Our doors and trim are actually a cream color, not true white. However, I knew I wanted white board and batten, so I just went for it. It does not match the trim or door, but honestly it is hard to tell, and I am very happy with how it turned out. I used two coats of Behr ‘White’ in a satin finish, to ensure it would be easily Scrabble. (See ‘toddler’ and ‘mud room’.)
The last step was to add my coat hooks. I purchased these coat hooks from Target. I added them to the horizontal boards only, since again, they were secured to studs. And there you have it! A completely transformed mud room in only one afternoon!
The update has not only made this space feel brighter, but it has added a whole new level of function for us. Check out the before and after!
Thanks for reading! If you want to keep up with more projects at my house, follow me on Instagram (@leather_and_threads) or check back here often for my sporadic Twin Tuesday updates.
-Dania
Sandra Koll
What do you do with your ironing board and swiffer now?
Sandra Koll
P.S. It turned out great!
Dania
The swiffer went into the basement because it never got used, the ironing board moved into the hall closet right next to the mud room.