Bathroom Makeover with Board and Batten

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To say this bathroom makeover was long overdue is an understatement. It was an embarrassment and an eyesore…but now it’s gorgeous and features a board and batten wall! Come check it out…

Before we get too far into the pretty part, we have to start with the ugly. The nasty. The cringe-worthy “befores”. But first, a bit of backstory.

You’ve heard the saying, “out of sight, out of mind” – well this was definitely one of those rooms in our house. The sad thing is, our four boys had been using this bathroom every day. *cringe* I hardly ever went in there and let’s just say that when I finally did go in and *actually looked* at the room with fresh eyes…well, “horrified” would be an understatement.

This room immediately got moved to Top Of The List of house projects.

This bathroom is our boys’ bathroom and a huge mistake I made years ago was priming the ceiling – and then forgetting to paint it. How does that even happen?! Honestly, we were also working on three or four other rooms at the same time and I think it just got overlooked.

Sadness.

Anyway, because of that, the ceiling was peeling, beginning to mold, and of course – being a 104 year old house – had some pretty nasty cracks. The joys of old house ownership. But this is what you sign up for with an old house and I still love it through and through.

SO.

Are you ready for the shocking befores?

Here ya go (brace yourself)…

*This post contains affiliate links and is sponsored by HomeRight. I only work with brands I actually use and love and I’m delighted to share my experience with you. See my full disclosure here.

Bathroom Makeover Before

I know, right? There are so many sad things here, I don’t even know where to start. So let’s move on to how we fixed this mess.

First of all, we scraped, cleaned, and did multiple coats of mold killing primer. But those cracks in the ceiling…ugh. Mr. 1915 and I decided to put up beadboard since we’ve had good luck with that in the past. Once it was up, we (again) primed it multiple times and then painted.

We used the HomeRight PaintStick EZ-Twist and I tell you what – it makes rolling so much faster! Since the PaintStick holds paint inside the handle, you’re not wasting time rolling, bending, loading, rolling, bending, loading. You load up the PaintStick and keep going and going until you need to refill. If you’ve got a room to paint, you NEED one of these bad boys. Go to my expert profile on HomeRight to get all the details for how to use the PaintStick, step by step. And be sure to check out all my other HomeRight projects while you’re over there!

Board and Batten

Then it was time for the board and batten to go on the main wall. This bathroom is really tiny so doing the board and batten on just the one wall made sense. We used this tutorial from Lauren over at Bless ‘er House with a couple small modifications.

First, the MDF went up as a base for the b&b. Also: this is a great shot of the trimless door. *sigh. Poor door.

The we painted the MDF and got the overlays on.

Then came time to do the mudding. Such a messy, dusty job to mud and sand and prep – but much needed and worth it for a nice finish.

At this point, I got so involved with getting this project done that I didn’t take any more step by step photos (sorry). We put a nice finish trim up at the ceiling around the beadboard and I was up and down off the ladder priming and painting in between homeschooling and basketball that photos were the last thing on my mind.

Bathroom Makeover Afters

Now comes the pretty part. I absolutely love how it all turned out in the end. It was so worth all the frustration and work that went into this room (100+ yr. old houses are never plumb).

One more time…Before:

After!

Squeeee!!! It makes me do a happy dance!

The board and batten felt tedious and time consuming, but goodness, it was so worth it! I’m crazy for it. We added hooks so all the boys could hang their towels – including a couple smaller, lower hanging hooks so even the little guys can reach their own hooks. Let’s hope that means less towels left on the floor. 😉

We also removed the ugly towel bars from the back of the door. So much better. Also notice the pretty trim around the door now! It’s no longer naked. 🙂

The last thing on our list is new flooring, but we’ll have to wait on that until the budget allows. We’re hoping to get it done within the next couple months. However, the improvement is already so wonderful that I’m delighted with what’s already been done. I can wait a month or so for new flooring. I guess… 😉

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