I have been wanting to add trim to my walls for a while now. Our house is just like all of the other houses in our neighborhood so I like to find ways to make my house like more of a custom home with unique things that other homes don’t have. Adding a board and batten trim is an easy and inexpensive way to make your home look like a custom craftsman home.

The first thing I did was paint the walls white where I was adding the trim. At Home Depot I bought  two 4 x 8 ft of 15/32 pressure treated plywood and had them cut it. I bought two boards because I figured I would need a lot of trim pieces and also so that while the boards were getting cut the two boards would add extra stability to it. The kind man cut the boards in to 2 1/2 inch strips of wood. I think this wood was a good choice because it was smooth-however I found that sometimes one side was less smooth so I always made sure to put the smooth side out. 

I measured the boards and used a chop saw to cut them. Then I would sand the edges of the wood so they were smooth. I also used a finish nail gun to attach the boards to the wall. I attached the vertical lines first and then nailed in the shorter horizontal lines after. 

I filled the nail holes and any uneven parts with a putty and/or caulk. Then sanded that down before painting it all white. I used about three coats on the wood pieces. I used this thin board because I didn’t want to have to remove or change my baseboards and my baseboards are very thin at the top. At the bottom where the new trim pieces meet the baseboards there sometimes was a little overhang so I just used caulk and putty to try and smooth it over. 

I also added the same pattern board and batten to these partition walls I have in my dining room and another two in my kitchen. So in all it was 8 sides of partition walls, a small wall on the left side of the staircase and then this large wall on the right of the staircase. It seemed like trim for days! I also added that trim to the top of my columns 6 columns in total. For the top of the columns I just used a 3 1/2 inch piece of pine board and cut the angles around the top using a chop saw. Then a few inches below I nailed in a piece of 1 1/2 inch trim. It makes the columns and partition walls seem so much more finished now. 

It wasn’t hard work necessarily, but definitely tedious. And I love seeing all of my craftsman styled walls now.