Board and Batten Installation: Day 4

Catch up on Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3!

Let's just call today "Setbacks", shall we? My poor hubby. About two hours into the day, he was making great progress and had all of the vertical boards cut and nailed to one of the longer walls. He went to put on the top board and this is what he saw.

Totally not cool. He checked his measurements, but from the floor to the top of the vertical boards on both walls was 50". See? Proof! His measurements were spot on!

So what happened?! Why were the boards not lining up?!

Come to find out, the house has settled in that corner some (Our house isn't ancient, but at 15 years old, it isn't a baby either, so you naturally get some settling.) and near that corner of the room, the floor is 1/2" lower than the rest of the room. Grrr!

I felt terrible for Jeremy, because after 2 hours of work, the only thing he could do was rip all of the vertical boards he'd just finished installing off of the wall. This time, he installed the top board before the vertical boards, lining up the top board with the joining top board from the other wall. He was able to salvage the vertical boards by using his Dremel to cut the nails off. Then, he  used his circular saw to re-cut the vertical boards to fit in between the baseboard and top board. To get the boards to fit and accommodate the sloped floor, each board was a different measurement, all off from each other by about 1/4". So irritating. But, he was able to fix that wall in about an hour and a half and kept a good attitude about the whole thing.

After he finished that wall, he completed the wall behind the door easily. He notched the corner of the ledge with his jigsaw so no one would injure themselves on the sharp corner. I'll post a picture of the notched ledge tomorrow.

The next area he tackled was tedious territory. This nook in the room has four doors in it. Yes, four. Between the bathroom door, bedroom door, closet door, and walk out attic door, he had quite a lot to cut around and small spaces to get trim into! He also had to deal with light switches in this section of the room. He cut around the light switches, angling the cuts that directly join with the light switches. We are planning to get new light switches that are built out and chunkier to make them blend in with the board and batten.

 Blurry phone pic, but it was the only way I could get at least half of the nook into one photo. 

Between the lightswitch and that tiny piece in the corner, this small wall was a lot of work!

He also angled the ledge baords near any walkways and where it joined up with door or window moulding...you know, so no one needs to go to the emergency room after bumping into the wall. Haha! :)

Only one wall left, people! Then off to the next steps...spackle, caulk, and paint! SO thankful for this man and all of his hard work!