It’s Wednesday the 27th, which means it’s time to share this season’s unofficial Pinterest Challenge project (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else—Katie dreamed it up to push us from pinning to doing). Huzzah!
For this round we took on our biggest challenge yet: adding character to a previously bare hallway with board and batten. A week after finishing, the space already feels transformed.
Is it strange that I’ve been sitting on the floor just staring at it? Photos don’t fully capture the effect—board and batten has depth and dimension you have to see in person. It adds polish and visual interest to a small, frequently used hallway, turning it from bland to intentional.
We followed advice and inspiration from several great tutorials, then put our own spin on the project. There’s still a bit of art to hang, but the structure is in place and the space reads much more finished now.
Before we started, we reviewed these helpful tutorials:
- Ana at Ana-White
- Sara at Thrifty Decor Chick
- Kate at Centsational Girl
- Emily at Decor Chick
We’ll publish a full step-by-step tutorial and a complete video of the process soon—right now we were racing to take photos for this post and didn’t finish editing the footage. Even so, the work itself wasn’t overly complicated. The project took us nearly the full week we’d planned, but each step is manageable if you take it one stage at a time. Our general order of operations was:
- measure and gather materials
- mark, level, and attach the top rails
- nail and glue the battens in place
- fill nail holes and caulk gaps
- sand filled areas and prime all wood
- paint the wood and the walls below the rail white
- paint the walls above the rail in your chosen color (painting the wall first can be even easier)
For the wall color, we chose the soft platinum-gray Moonshine by Benjamin Moore—the same hue used in the adjacent framed hallway—to keep things cohesive and airy. A darker color might have made the small hallway feel cramped, so the muted tone balances nicely with the crisp white of the board and batten. The low-contrast, tone-on-tone look feels subtle, while the molding provides the visual depth we wanted. (Note: we still need to paint the trim in the framed hallway pure white to match the board and batten.)
We’ll post a full budget breakdown once we sort through the receipts. The photos here were taken while paint was still drying, so we’re eager to finalize the tutorial and explain the tools and materials in detail. The bottom line: anyone can do this. It requires time and patience, but the individual steps aren’t technically demanding. If anything, the project proves that persistent effort pays off—this could easily have been the first Pinterest Challenge we didn’t complete, but it wasn’t!
Be sure to check Katie, Megan, and Michelle to see what they made for the challenge—they’ll be sharing their projects today as well.
We’d also love to see what you tackled during the Pinterest Challenge week. If you blogged about your project, here’s how to share it:
- Click the “Add Your Link” button at the bottom of the host post.
- Paste the direct URL to the blog post about your project (not your homepage).
- In the name field, use a descriptive project title like “Homemade Leaf Wreath” instead of your personal name.
- If possible, link back to the project posts that inspired you and to your own source of inspiration so creators get credit.
If you don’t have a blog, feel free to share a link in the comments or post photos on a public photo-sharing gallery so others can view them. I’m so excited to see what you all made—seriously, I can hardly wait.