The wainscot board and batten in this bathroom cost us $99.51, not including paint. This is a super easy DIY project to tackle, if you're looking for something new to take on that can be done in any room of the house! Below is how we did it.
Prior to renovations, this room was a blank slate.
We began by measuring the walls. Typically, battens (the piece that runs up and down vertically) are installed about 1 foot apart on center.
If a wall did not lend itself to the 12" on center pattern, we adjusted the layout to 10", 11" or 13" on center to make sure all the batten boards would be equally spaced.
To make our battens, we purchased a 1/2" MDF board.
A 4x8' panel of MDF will cost you $23.75 at Home Depot. We bought 3 panels and used a table saw to slice them into 3-inch-wide strips of batten.
If you don't have a table saw or you don't want to do too many cuts, you can buy 3" furring strips. But it will cost you more. Cutting up the MDF panels will end up costing about $0.70 per batten, whereas buying the precut furring strips is $2.94 a piece or $1.47 per 4' strip.
Once we had our battens cut, we cut out our top rail and baseboard moulding. The top rail is the same 3" width as the batten. We cut the base to be 6".
We started by installing the top rail and the base moulding first.
We marked each with our 10-13" on center batten measurements. Then we cut down the height of each batten fit within the gap.
Everything was secured into place using a finishing nail gun. Make sure you don't put a nail through an electrical or plumbing in the walls!
To finish it off, we added a trim piece to the top railing, using a decorative shoe moulding. And then we painted all of our new trim work with Behr Toasty Gray and the walls are Smoky White.
If you decide to take on this DIY project, please share your questions or finished photos with me! You can log in to comment below or tag me on instagram! @RestorationLane