We all have them . . . long dark hallways in our homes. WHAT can you do with them? HOW can you transform them from tunnels to terrific?
That was the weekend challenge at our Cottage In the Woods. We took a little MDF and added a whole lot of architectural interest and instant character to our dark tunnel of a hallway!
I took this photo just as the work was starting. I wish I had taken a picture of the hall when we first bought the house – but who takes photos of halls?? Since moving in we have painted the walls, (Napery #6386 from Sherwin Williams) and replaced all the hollow core six-panel doors with solid Santa Fe-style ones from Jeld-Wen.
All the casing and baseboards have been replaced. We went with a very simple 1×6 for both and finished the door casing with a bit of scribe on the edges. This is a treatment you see in century homes; it gave us instant character. 
Here’s a snapshot of the entire hall with the completed “board and batten” look. We just did the battens and used the existing walls for our “boards”. We did a 1.5″ top ledge to display photos and other small items.
The board and batten style reminds me of the southeast which is why I decided to go with this style. My goal is to transform the house into a “southern home” here in Yankee-ville!
I will intersperse some “Wonderful Graffiti” with the photos. I love the combination of photos and words, thoughts or quotes. 
It’s a nice way to tell a story and enrich the photos.
I’m just getting started putting pictures up. I put these of my nieces into floating frames – LOVE this look. The simplicity puts the total focus on the photo.
My sister had photos of all the kids taken by a friend of hers in Georgia who does natural light photography. I can’t wait for the pictures of my twin nephews to arrive. In the mean time, the empty frames will have to do. I’ll be putting up some wedding photos and other pics in the next few weeks.
Now on our “to do” list is to add some rope lighting in crown molding along the top of the ceiling the entire length of the hall. This will give a beautiful glow to the dark ceiling so we won’t have to turn on the canned lights which rob the space of ambiance.
I love the results of this project! Amazing what a little vision, paint and MDF can do! Hope this easy and inexpensive project has inspired you! I’d love to know (and see) how you’ve transformed a dark hallway. To see what’s inspiring others these days, hop on over to The Inspired Room!
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Really can’t wait to see this.. such a difference. Amazing you did this all in a weekend.
Followed your link from the inspired nest and really enjoyed your post. Great ideas to get people thinking of potential possiblities and making the best out of what you have.
What a transformation– I love it! The white is a great contrast and that little shelf is just perfect. With the rope lighting it will be just stunning!
Thank you for posting this! I have wanted to do something very similar using beadboard in our hallway and my husband thinks I am nuts.But I showed him the pics of yours and he is game! YES!!!! Thank you, thank you.
Hey Liz,
I’m so glad our project will help your project get off the ground! It’s so funny the resistance we sometimes get from people who don’t have “vision” – but in this case, it’s a HALLWAY – how much worse could our ideas make it??? My husband has learned to trust me when it comes to all the home projects I have planned for our little Cottage In the Woods – he says “you’re the designer” (not sure whether that’s resignation or pride I hear in his voice ;o) Please let us know when your project is done. Can’t wait to see it!
I really love how that looks. I can’t believe that we don’t have any hallways in our house- how weird, but you’ve handled yours beautifully.
Amazing….love it! thanks for sharing your photos…it gets me thinking of doing this to ours!
I am loving following your inspiration all these
years from when you lived in the south!
Can’t wait to see where your imagination will
take you with the wording to go with your photos.
When you say floating frame; does that mean
no mat is used??
Blessings to you always.
Hi Patti, My Southern Living Texas Friend!
Since I can no longer live in my beloved South I am slowing making my house into a Southern Home – I want it to ooze warmth, welcoming and a comfortable, casual elegance that beckons friends and family to come on in a stay a while!
You got it, a floating frame refers to the pics floating because there is no mat.
It looks terrific! I love all the architectural detail.
It looks absolutely beautiful! What a great job!
Found you through ASPTL
Amazing make-over. I love how much character you added to a hallway!
Looks GREAT! I was wondering how wide your hallway is. Ours is about 32 inches. No that is not a typo. It is VERY long. I love this look put didn’t know if my hallway would be too skinny. Thanks for the info.
Our hallway measures 45″ across. I think you could do something like this but I would suggest maybe a more traditional beadboard with just a trim cap as you don’t have any space to spare for a ledge.
Love, love what you did! Thank you so much for sharing and inspiring the rest of us! annaandrose.blogspot.com
This is fabulous! I think I’d need to do the type w/the trim cap as my kids are right about that “shelf” height. LOL! I’m trying to picture how you’d do rope lighting IN the crown moulding?
Kim, another option is to put your treatment higher than the kids! Traditionally we do it at 36″ but I think it always looks more interesting to extend it up further on the wall.
We will be starting the rope lighting project later this week. I’ll take pics and post later!
Your hallway looks great! That is exactly what I’m planning on doing to our mile-long hallway–but first we have to be ready to replace flat hollow-core doors and paint ALL the trim in our house. So it is one giant project rolled up into one.
I’m impressed that you all tackled it yourselves in one weekend.
Your project sounds like ours. My husband has painted the oak stair rails and the rises of each stair which has been a huge improvement. Slowly we are replacing all the hollow core doors (and trim). We started in this hallway since it’s fairly isolated. Right now we still have the oak baseboards and trim left in the dining room and living room as well as in our master bedroom/bathroom. These kinds of “whole house” projects can be soooo overwhelming. We’re just attacking it a room at a time – kinda like how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! We did have help on this project – brought in a couple of guys who had the right tools. It took them just the afternoon.
Okay…I’ve been VERY seriously thinking about doing this to our main living space. I’m hoping you can answer some questions that we have: will this “board and batten” style work on lightly textured walls? What size boards did you use? How did you fasten the boards to the wall? My husband wonders if you need to make sure they go into studs (is there a chance that they’ll come off? Hmmm…I’m not sure how to correctly word my question) or just into dry wall? Thanks for any help!
Yes, this technique will work on lightly-textured walls. The key will be the painting after the battens are up. You can use a roller but then you have to go over it with a brush in order for it to look like wood (we found out the hard way). We used sheets of MDF and cut the battens to 1.5 inches wide. The height was determined by the stair rail in the foyer. The ledge is 1.5″
During this process we discovered that one of our walls actually had a WAVE in it! You couldn’t see it until a flat, straight board went up against it. So they had to cut into the drywall in order for the ledges to be straight against the wall. Where the battens had big spaces, we had to use fill in those gaps.
They don’t need to go into studs. The guys just used a nail gun. You could also use Liquid Nails. The tricky part in a hallway is to make sure that the battens are in the same location when there are walls right across from each other (on either side of you when walking down the hall). There are outlets and closets and light switches, etc. Makes it tricky. We spaced ours about 12″ but had to cheat in a few places when we had an outlet or whatever. The guys spaced everything out before hand and made marks on the wall so they knew where each was going. I think a larger room like you’re doing will be easier than a hallway where both sides have to line up since they are directly across from each other with no furniture.
Here are two sites that were helpful to us:
This Old House
The Little Things
This is EXACTLY the inspiration we needed for our long dark hallway (which, incidentally, the contractors only put ONE light fixture at the end…sigh). I love the look of the wall and never considered board and batten…I only thought about bead board and wainscoting for trim work. I won’t show hubby the before and after yet because he is working on a HUGE project right now. But I am definitely bookmarking this post!
And as for the crown molding with rope lights…GENIUS!
Blessings!
Hi Diana,
I just wanted to say that in all of the inspiration pictures I’ve been looking at for what seems like forever, I don’t know that I have ever been more excited about something. And it’s a hallway, of all things!! I have the Hallway of Doom and this is an absolutely perfect way to transform it.
Do you possibly have a picture somewhere of where the hallway meets whatever room it starts from? I have a strange hallway where one wall juts out into the living room… I’m wondering if I would carry the boards all the way or stop where the shorter wall ends? Things to ponder! Anyway, beautiful hallway (never thought I’d say that!!).
–Tracy
I love this! How tall did you go with the treatment?
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