Would you believe it if I told you that we moved to Key West in January and I haven’t been to the beach once?  True story.

That could have something to do with the fact that we moved here from a Caribbean island with the most beautiful water on earth.

Or, more accurately, that I’m not really the lay on the beach type … I’m more of a scour-the-beach-for-seaglass-and-driftwood girl so I can whip them into easy craft ideas.

And this easy craft project is proof that there are projects that can take less than 15 minutes and have a huge presence in a room.

I’m super excited to be participating in a series called Craft Lightning, where a group of bloggers is putting together a great resource of beautiful craft projects that can be completed in 15 minutes or less.

Now, if you count the time I spent meandering the beaches of Curacao, this project doesn’t qualify.  But if you are a driftwood collector and have a backdrop and a glue gun and a spare 15 minutes, this is the project for you.  :)

The first step is picking a backdrop for your craft.  It could be a frame with craft paper in the back or a painted piece of wood or anything, really, that fits with your style and is flat.

I had just the perfect thing for us … another piece of driftwood.  :)  It started as a 16 foot long board I found at the beach in Curacao and last year made into a desktop.  After a quick chop down to size I had the perfect backdrop for my easy little craft project.
Please just ignore everything else in that picture, this side of the house hasn’t gotten much attention since we moved in.  :)

And I’ll take this opportunity to apologize to our neighbors who have no idea I have a blog for whipping out the circular saw after 9pm.  My bad.  :)

Once you have your backdrop, plug-in your hot glue gun and layout your pieces of driftwood in the shape you desire.

I knew I wanted a fish shape, but how about a tree shape for Christmas or a heart for a child’s bedroom or even a monogram would be fun!  You’re really only limited by the sizes and shapes of your driftwood.
Then just glue each piece one at a time.
 And hang.
We just screwed eye hooks into the back of the wood and secured a heavy gauge hanging wire, then screwed a heavy-duty hook into the wall … we have wood slat walls, but depending on the weight of your project you should probably look for studs.  :)

Super easy, right?!?!
And this piece is 37 inches wide and 25 inches high, not only is it the perfect statement piece for our new board and batten wall, but I love that we can create something so unique and meaningful to us in less than 15 minutes and for nothing more than the cost of the hot glue.

And if you’re wondering exactly what ‘statement’ this piece is making I think it’s “I love driftwood, and fishes and chippy wood and pizza” … or something like that.  ;)

If you, too, love driftwood check out how you can make your own driftwood Christmas tree, driftwood and seaglass Christmas craft or other random driftwood craft ideas.

And be sure to check in with Angie of Country Chic Cottage and Carolina of 30 Minute Crafts to find so many more easy craft ideas that you can do in 15 minutes or less.

Do you craft with beach finds?  Or would you rather just lay on a comfy beach chair soaking up the sun?

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The ‘any ol’ color will do’ or ‘I can’t paint anything until I find just the right shade of perfect’ end?

I would have said I was closer to the end where as long as I liked the color I was fine with it … until this house.  I’ve never really been stuck with analysis paralysis when it comes to paint, but I have two strategies that have worked basically fool-proof for me over the years.

Strategy #1 – For the two homes we’ve previously purchased and lived in I found a paint card that I liked and picked all different colors off of that one card except for one accent room.

Easy peasy.  It creates a nice cohesive look throughout the house and really took the stress out of the whole process for me.

For our first house I went shades of beige.  AHHHHH!  Should I shudder in shame?  Well, the way I look at it is that it was the perfect place to start for us.  It was our first house, we knew we would need it to appeal to the masses for resale and I really thought (at the time) that the dark Jute tone we painted the dining room was really going out on a limb colorwise.  And our accent room was grey.

When we evolved to our second house I went with another earth tone, more in a green color spectrum.  The nice, light Fennel color was perfect in the kitchen and bright (with lots of windows) family room and the darker shade was nice in the living room and guest room.  We had a cute little sun room off of the living room that we painted a great shade of sky blue (I think we’ll use a similar color here) and we even added a second ‘accent’ room, the third bedroom that I used as a craft room in this yellow color.

Honestly, I didn’t like the color in the bedroom, but the leftover paint was the perfect touch for this kitchen upgrade.

Strategy #2 – If you’re living in a rental and want to update the color, but want to do it on the cheap, I use the easiest strategy of all.  Anything on the mistint table will do.  :)  And, I stock up when I see light shades, because they mix well with any color and you, more often than not, need more than one gallon for a room and chances of finding multiple gallons of the same color on the mistint table are slim.  So, keep those light shades on hand and then just mix with any color you find that will work.

Obviously, this strategy isn’t for anyone who is super particular about paint colors.

Strategy #3 – My new, untested strategy that I’m trying here in Key West … visit a lot of open houses for homes on the real estate market and see what I like.  :)  It may seem silly, and even somewhat remedial, but we are working with a lot of old architecture and charm with the Dade County Pine walls and ceilings, and we’re hoping wood floors.  We really want these features to have the spotlight, and not a paint color.

So, we decided a fun way to peek into our neighbors’ houses get inspiration for looks we love with Dade County Pine is to see what others are doing.  :)  So far I’ve learned that if we’re going to paint the wood, I really like the lighter shades, almost just a tinted white.  That leaves us open to strip a few walls and have fun accent walls without be overwhelmed by wood everywhere.

Here are a few fun looks we’ve seen.

These photos are from a great Key West real estate blog and our realtor’s site.

Wish us luck.  :)

I’ve also enjoyed reading these other great resources that you might find helpful.

10 tips for picking paint colors by HGTV.com.

Favorite tips and tricks for choosing a paint color by The Creativity Exchange

How to pick paint colors by Domestic CEO

How to choose the right colors for your rooms by This Old House

How to choose the right paint color for your home by Apartment Therapy

And, if you already have an inspiration piece in mind that you want to pull colors from, the Chip It tool could be helpful, there are lots of details on it in How to pick paint colors {where to begin} from Jeanne Oliver.

And for the color we ended up using above our board and batten wall … Sherwin Williams Rainwashed mixed 50% lighter in Glidden eggshell paint.

And tell me, how do you pick your paint colors?  What shades do you think we should go with in this old Key West conch house? We want Key West charm, without it being Key West tacky, ifyouknowwhatImean.

The post how to pick paint colors appeared first on the space between.

Have I mentioned we love it?!?  Yes, it is the only finished wall in this place, but we are still in love.

To get all of the background on this wall and how we learned that part of it used to be a hallway and how this board and batten (some call it wainscoting) is the perfect solution to cover up all her imperfection go here.

This is going to be a full rundown of how you, too, can design and create your own accent wall that can serve the purpose to cover up an unsightly wall.

We definitely added to the amount of time it would take to do this project by doing all of the cuts on our own.  But, if you have the right tools, it will save you a bunch of money.  And since we were also at a stage in this house renovation process where we needed to add baseboard and crown molding we had even more cuts than most.

These were the cuts we had to make with our new table saw:

3/4 inch sheet of 4′ x 8′ MDF
*cut 3 strips 8 inches wide (the width of our baseboard around the entire room) and cut 4 strips 6 inches wide (the width of our crown molding) – we have many more of these sized cuts to complete the baseboard and crown in the living and dining room.
*you could make your shelf out of this also by cutting 2 strips 4 inches wide

1/2 inch sheet of 4′ x 8′ MDF
*cut 8 strips 2 inches wide (one is long enough to cut in two pieces to use for the top two battens)
*cut 2 strips 3 inches wide (the need for two is because our wall is longer than 8 feet, the length of the sheet of MDF)

Since this was our first soiree with our new saw, and those sheets of MDF are heavy with a capital H, we ended up with some edges that looked like this.

Clearly we’re still perfecting our new tandem table saw technique.

I was so worried about it that I actually sanded, primed and painted a piece before we moved forward with the project to make sure I was going to be OK with the final look.

Take my word for it, it all ends up looking great.  :)

After you have all of your cuts made, use a palm sander to smooth out all of the edges, and I even rounded the edges just slightly just because I like the look.
If you’re at the empty wall stage, like us, you’ll need to install the baseboard of your choice.  We’ll be giving the baseboard their due one day, but here the one big thing we had to do was notch around our outlets.

I knew I wanted a really high, craftsman style baseboard and for some reason none of our outlets are at the same height.  So instead of trying to make the baseboard smaller to avoid notching, we just went with it.  My tip would be to notch around the outlet plate cover entirely so the plate cover will lay flat on your wall.
Yes, those fabulous outlets days are numbered.  :)

I’m having fun using my awesome notebook from my favorite sister-in-law as a sketch pad for ideas for this house renovation.

Please just excuse that carpet, we’re using it as a built-in drop cloth.  :)

The height of our top cross batten, the first batten we installed, was basically determined by the spot on the wall where the Dade County Pine boards started lining up all the way across.

We used our nail gun and 2 inch brad nails to install all of the battens.  Since we were nailing into drywall, then wood slats and then the studs … you could probably get away with using 1 1/2 inch.

I would say make sure that top cross batten is as close to level as possible.  With these old houses everything is a little out of whack.  We’ve learned through the years that sometimes our new additions need to be a little out of whack too to actually fit in with the old character of the place.  I say use your judgement and make it look right to you.  :)

From here, put on your thinking cap and figure out what distance apart your battens should be based on the size of your wall.

Take the width of your wall, minus any trim you’re going to put in the corners (we used quarter round), divided by how many battens you want to get your measurement.  Then just take the width of your battens into consideration and make a bracket out of scrap wood to keep the distance between each batten consistent.

Here’s the big math:

(width of wall) @130 inches – (width of quarter round times 2) almost 1.5 inches / (how many battens we want) 8 = @16 inches apart.

That 16 inches includes the width of our battens, 2 inches, so I cut a bracket 14 inches and used it to determine where to attach my battens.
There may be a few millimeters out of place here or there … but I’ll never tell where.

Since we had first installed the drywall, and now the battens (the top cross batten at 3/4 inch thick), we had an inch and a quarter sized ledge for our shelf.  Add in a little trim piece underneath and we thought a 4 inch wide shelf would be wide enough to add a few small (and, yes Joel, light weight) accessories and large enough to add some architectural interest.
And then like magic it will all be primed.  :)

Just kidding.  After you have it all installed it’s time to spackle all the nail holes and caulk all the cracks.

Now, I usually spackle then sand then prime then caulk.  The reason is that you can paint right over caulk, and sometimes primer will fill in the smaller cracks.  I think it saves me time and I end up caulking less.  But that’s just me.  :)

If you’re working with a wall that you’re trying to cover up, you’ll have the upper battens to install here too.  Just by installing your crown molding if you want it and then attach the battens over those imperfections to hide.
Tip!!! Paint the wall above first so you don’t have to cut in or tape around the new battens after.  And be sure to cover up any bold color with the perfect primer!

Then, badda bing, badda boom, install the upper battens you need, quarter round on the edges if you want and done!
Welllll, we’re not exactly done.  ;)
And you want to see something funny.  hahahaha
Yes, I just pulled in a little table and potted flower from the front porch.  That chair is actually a patio chair but it serves as a good break chair in our living right now.  :)

And look what fun we have to contend with on the floor.  That black is the back side of the orange carpet glued directly to the hardwood floors.  Which is below the berber carpet that is attached with tack strips.

At least I don’t have to keep my arms above my head to do the floor work, right?!?!

If you want to see where we started in this room check it out here, and see how we removed the drop ceiling, spackled the cracked paint and got started on the board and batten wall.

And a little trip down memory lane for this wall, starting with what it looked like during our home inspection when we were under contract on this house.
And after we removed the paneling and drywall and uncovered the old hallway.
And now!!

And to keep up with the progress on this room you can watch the full before house tour video … link to the other projects we’ve done are on that page as well.  :)

And tell me what you think.  Do you have any accent wall ideas of your own.  Like the look of high board and batten or prefer the short versions?  Are you maybe a little bit in love with that driftwood fish?!?!?!

*post contains affiliate links for products we own, love and used for this project

The post how to install board and batten {and what’s next for the living room} appeared first on the space between.