Board and Batten Entry

 Our house lacks character like many typical homes.  We also needed a place to hang my daughter's backpack.  A place easy to grab on the way out the door to catch the bus in the morning and easy to put away when she gets home.  So, we decided to add character AND a place to hang a few things behind our front door. 

This is the space we had to work with - small and empty.  

Since this is such a small space I decided to sand off the majority of the texture on the wall instead of adding a super thin sheet of plywood to the wall. I'll be honest - it bothers me slightly but not enough to redo it.  I bet guests will not notice at all.  

Then my little helper and I used our rip cut to cut up some extra plywood.  I wanted this to be a super cheap project and to use up some of the wood in our garage.  (You know, to make room for other projects.)

We added the battens and wrapped them around to the front door.  We screwed these into the stud (we could only find one) and added anchors to make sure they could hold weight. The top batten is 5 1/2" and the other is 4 1/2"

Our walls have rounded corners so we cut the ends at a 45. It looks a lot smoother but if our corners were normal we would have left a regular cut and ended it right at the edge.  

Like I wrote above, we used what we had - which meant piecing together boards for the bottom.  I do not recommend that.  It is much easier to use a full piece.  But, with some putty and sanding and more putty and more sanding it looks great!

The boards going down are 2 1/2" and are spaced about 16" apart (the middle is centered on the wall).  I was planning to space them a foot apart and not put one on the corner by the door - but, it looked cluttered so we just put one in the middle and it looks great!  Makes the space seem a little bigger.  

Eventually we'll replace flooring and with that the baseboards, so no special cuts at the bottom for us - they actually butt up really nicely at the bottom.  

Last step before paint was to add a ledge at the top.  I'm not planning to put anything up there, but wanted to add more dimension to it. This was the only piece of lumber we bought at it was less than $2!  

Bad lighting, but it's beautiful! We cut the top ledge at a 45 by the rounded corner also - to match the rest of it.  

We caulked and painted it white.  LOVE!

I did 2 coats of paint and sanded lightly between each coat.  I sanded again ready for the 3rd and final coat and my sweet hubby put up the hooks while I was gone.  (He didn't realize it needed another coat) Someday I'll take the hooks down and put up that last coat of paint, but for now it is beautiful! 

The hooks were $4 each from Home Depot. So, all this character added to our little entryway cost less than $10!