This One's For The Fellas

About 3,574 of you commented or emailed that you were showing my board and batten posts to your men to convince them it was time to give this glorious wall treatment a shot. And all of you asked the same questions...

"How long?" and "How much?"

Perfectly reasonable questions, especially when the fellas get involved. I need to make a t-shirt for The Hubster with those words on it. Those are his first questions whenever I reveal a new hair(hare?)-brained scheme. Not that I think board and batten was hayre-brained.

So in the interest of making a short story as long as possible, I'm turning my board and batten story into a trilogy. If you missed the first two installments, you can see all the glory shots from Monday and the nitty-gritty details on Tuesday.

Let's start with "How long?".

I would say that this was a weekend project, but let me put that in perspective for you. We did 2 fairly large walls. One was 19 feet long and the other was 17 feet long. Obviously, it would take way less time if you're covering less wall space.

If I had to guess at an actual number, I would say less 20 man (or woman!) hours for our whole project. If you're working together, you could easily do this over a weekend.

Here's a breakdown of the time that we spent

• 3 hours painting the walls (I did 3, yes 3, coats of paint trying to get an even finish)
• 2 hours cutting the wood strips for the crown and battens
• 4 hours priming and painting the crown and battens
• 2 hours hanging the crown
• 5 hours hanging the battens
• 1 hour filling in nail holes
• 2 hours painting the finished walls

Total estimate: 20 hours

Now let's get to the even more important question...How much cold, hard cash did we outlay for this project? Here's the approximate breakdown:

• 2 sheets of 3/4" MDF @ $20 each = $40
• 1 gallon of primer @ $22
• 2 gallons for white paint @ $26 each = $52
• 2" finishing nails for nailgun @ $15
• Caulk @ $5
• Wood filler $3
  

Total estimate: $136

In our case, we had less than $100 out of pocket because we already had the primer, 1 gallon of the paint and the caulk.

And that's my story. The end.

~~~~~~~~~~

DIY Day will begin at 10pm tonight! Do you have a post ready?

Speaking of DIY Day, I realized that I never announced the winner of last week's prize from the fabulous gals at The Hip Hostess! The winner of the Black a la Mode sheath apron is Cheri from It's So Very Cheri. Congratulations! Shoot me an email and we'll get you set up.

If you're ready to make a purchase from The Hip Hostess, you can use the code "SOFT" to get 15% off your order!