DIY Board and Batten Reveal + Glidden Review

Woo to the hoo! It’s DIY board and batten reveal day!

If you missed out earlier this week, I revealed our foyer makeover and shared all of the details for part one of our DIY board and batten.

I’m so excited how this one turned out!

Last week, our foyer looked like this:

That shiplap wall added tons of character, but the front door…not so much. It was still very plain builder grade.

Our hallway connecting our foyer and living room was rather one-dimensional too. It was dark with no natural light and had no wow-factor at all.

On Sunday, this was our situation. Fresh bare board and batten just begging for a pretty paint job.

We spackled, caulked, and sanded all of the wood knots, seams, and nail holes to prep for a smooth finish.

I shot this prior to sanding. (Sanding is important, y’all.)

Then taped up our trim.

Olivia helped out too. Can you tell by those little tape pieces stuck on the wall? She calls them stickers. Bless.

Glidden Paint was so wonderful to send a gallon of paint to me to try out. This was the first time I’d ever used Glidden Paint Duo Paint + Primer after using many other brands before, and I’m sold on this one.

Staying under budget is really important to me in all of my projects (if you’ve been following for a while, you probably already know).

Glidden is inexpensive, but it didn’t behave like a cheap paint for me. I was really happy with the coverage, and the finish was really smooth. A great quality paint brush can make a huge difference (mine has seen a lot of action).

I used the color Crisp Linen White in a semi-gloss finish.

I started on the trim first, and I feathered it out as I went so I didn’t have a hard paint line showing.

Lola was my supervisor, as usual. She’s my naptime DIY buddy.

Once the trim was done, I started rolling with a mini roller.

I always like using a plastic grocery bag as a paint tray liner for quick clean-up.

The paint is low VOC so, thankfully, it didn’t stink up our whole house. There was no smell at all.

I ended up doing two coats since I was painting directly over rather dark wall paint and wood. It dried really quickly though, so as soon as I was finished with one coat, I could start on the next.

After painting our entire hallway and foyer with all of those little trim details, I still had a cup or two of paint left in my gallon can. You can see lots of reviews from other DIYers on their Ratings and Reviews site. (I usually like to do my homework on that kind of thing.)

The whole process was tedious but worth it! I lurv our hallway now!

It’s finally a space Robert and I are proud of and flows so well into the rest of our house.

It adds so much charm alongside our $80 wood beam doorway.

Next stop on our to-do list is painting that front door something other than white. What color do you think we should do? I’m leaning toward something gray or blue but I’m stuck.

For comparison’s sake, can we check out a real before picture here? I shot this on closing day in December 2013.

We’ve come a long way in less than two years.

Our $35 wagon bench we found on Craigslist pops so beautifully against our shiny new trim.

We’ll be adding hooks and a little art above the bench eventually too.

If you ever want to go the DIY route for some board and batten yourself, be sure to pin this post: