Revealing our Board and Batten Bedroom

First thing’s first: what is board and batten? This is where panels are placed over the walls and battens, or thin strips of wood, are added over the seams of the panels. You may also see diy’ers skip the boards and just add batten to their walls as a unique focal point.

Before

When this project began, this area of the home consisted of a sewing/toy room, our bedroom and closet, and a bathroom. It was added on in the ‘80s and was ready for an update. There were a couple things we knew we wanted when beginning this project. First, we decided the sewing/toy room no longer served us, so that room was going to be torn out. Second, we really wanted a larger walk-in closet.

View from living room looking into main bedroom with toy room on the left and bathroom on the right.

Did you see THIS post on the updated main bathroom? This door got walled-off to make more room for closet space!

After going over a few scenarios, here’s what we decided to do structurally:

Tear out the toy room and make it part of the bedroom
Continue the bathroom wall all the way through the bedroom and make that corner the new walk-in closet.
Wall-off one bathroom door to give more wall space in the closet
Replace a window with a sliding glass door overlooking the backyard

During

When I began thinking about colors and design for this room, I first started with the colors already in our home to keep things unified. While these aren’t the exact colors I used in here, this was a good jumping-off point for me and an easy reference for when things started getting off-track.

Once I knew my colors, I browsed Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration. This photo from Oak Stone Homes in Ankeny, Iowa halted me where I stood.

Their entire Instagram feed is drool-worthy. Once I had board and batten in my head + finding this photo, we were off to the races. Time to start demo!

Our bedroom and closet were getting new carpet, and we decided to extend it into the living room.

The kids and I drew some pictures and wrote some Bible verses before the drywall went up!

As far as the walk-in closet, we were so thankful for The Container Store’s Elfa Closet System. It was so easy to input our closet dimensions and then customize the closet to fit our needs. We decided on white drawer fronts and nickel pulls. Our contractor said installation was slick! And bonus, we ordered ours at 30% off! What’s more? Each closet system allows you to add drawer organizers that fit the drawers of your closet precisely. We were able to order dividers and a jewelry organizer without even having to measure. Heck yeah.

Here you can see the board and batten getting installed. We decided to keep the oak doors because they’re really beautiful, but did the trim and door casings in the same color as the board and batten.