DIY Board and Batten Wall with Hooks: A Mini Hallway Mudroom!

No hall closet or mudroom? No problem! See how we created the perfect board and batten wall in an unused portion of a hallway that’s now the best out-of-the-way organization spot for our coats, backpacks, hats, purses, and more!

DIY Board and Batten Wall with Hooks: A Mini Hallway Mudroom

My dad is a retired construction superintendent, so whenever he comes to town for a visit, I ~~almost~~ always put him to work!

A few projects he’s helped us with (and by “help,” I mean do 99% of the job himself) include tearing down our dilapidated pergola, constructing the boys’ backyard playset, and assembling two-thirds of the furniture in my craft room.

Luckily, he works for cheap and only requires payment in the form of a heartfelt “thanks” from his only (and therefore, favorite) daughter and seeing his grandsons.

When I was proposing this project to him, I sent him this idea as inspiration (and so he could get a visual of my crazy plan), but he said we needed to “fancy it up a bit” so it would match the trim and details in the rest of our home.

Therefore, unlike my inspiration, this isn’t the absolute cheapest method in terms of materials (we used some brick moulding and other pre-primed moulding), but I was willing to spend a few more bucks to get a truly nice area that fits the rest of the house.

And you know me and that I’m not one to blog about things in a timely manner, so this project was actually completed….TWO YEARS AGO!! Yes, I’m just now getting around to finishing the blog post.

Better late than never, right. :)

Supplies

Here’s what we used for this fairly simple home improvement project of adding a board and batten hook wall in our hallway:

2″ x 10′ brick moulding
3.25″ x 8′ interior primed MDF base board moulding
2.5″ x 12′ pine primed finger joint chair rail moulding
Chalk reel
Level
Tape measure
Miter saw
Hammer
1.5″ and 2.5″ finish nails
Paintable caulk
Sand paper
Liquid Nails
Interior paint
Paint brush
Painter’s tape
Oil-rubbed bronze wall hooks
Power drill
Our names in wood

The Before

So here’s how this area of our long hallway looked before this project (please ignore Super Baby and Scout the Dog).

It’s situated between both of my boys’ bedrooms and is on the opposite end of our garage, which is how we enter and exit our home.

Therefore, this would be the perfect spot to add a mini-mudroom/non-hallway closet, or in other words, a board and batten hook wall.

We now like to simply refer to it as “the hook wall” (not very creative, I know).

Adding the Horizontal Pieces

After heading to Lowes with Daddy Dearest, we hauled our materials back home and got to work!

Once again, he pretty much did everything. My main responsibility was to document the progress with photos (obvi…hello, this is a DIY blog) and keep the kiddos and dog out of his way.

The first step was installing the horizontal pieces.

After deciding on their heights and marking their placements with a chalk reel…

…he cut the boards to size with our miter saw, added some Liquid Nails to the back, then hammered them into place with finishing nails.

We used some 3.25″ interior primed MDF base board moulding for the lower piece (which would later have some of the hooks added to) and some 2″ brick moulding for the top one.

Like I said, this was our “fancying it up a bit” instead of using basic unprimed 2×4’s (and hooray for a time-saver with no priming needed!).

Adding the Vertical Pieces

Once those were in, it was time to add the vertical pieces.

Since there are four of us, we decided to make four sections in this board and batten wall space, so three vertical lines were added using some 2.5″ pine primed finger joint chair rail moulding (more “fancying it up”).

As you can see, my then four-year-old was very eager to help out his Papa with this task.

For the bottom of the lower vertical pieces, my dad just cut a 45° angle into them so they would look nice butted up to the wall baseboard.

Sanding & Caulking

That was enough for one day’s work, so the following day, my dad finished his portion of the project by adding some paintable caulk over the nail holes and along the board seams.

Once those areas were nice and dry, I sanded them down until they were as smooth as my baby’s bottom and prepped for painting.

Painting

The next step was painting this area to make it look like the custom built-in that it is, and we used the same color as our trim.

It was coming together!

Adding the Hooks

Now it was finally my husband’s time to have a role in this DIY project, so once the paint was fully dried, he installed the oil-rubbed bronze hooks (where I instructed him to, naturally).

We added two hooks per each of the four sections as well and one on each of the lower vertical pieces, for a total of 11 hooks (but they’re double hooks so that makes a total of 22 actual hooks available…I know, too much math).

Adding Our Names

Here’s how the board and batten wall looked at this point.

Really nice and super functional (the new wall paint and lighting fixtures helped a lot too), but I wanted to add something to really personalize the space and also add a decorative touch.

Enter these personalized wooden names!

I simply stained them then attached them to the wall with some Command Strips, and voila!

Our board and batten wall with hooks in a hallway is now complete, and each of our four sections are easily identifiable.

Don’t these names complete the space so perfectly?? I just love ’em.

Our Completed Board and Batten Wall with Hooks!

And here’s a look at our completed board and batten wall with hooks in our hallway!

This is definitely one of the most useful updates we’ve made to our home since moving in back in 2016. We all truly use this space nearly every single day and it’s done wonders for keeping our items organized and off the floor/out of the kitchen.

Three cheers for pretty, personalized, and practical organization!