Personalized Wooden Names for a Board & Batten Hook Wall

Learn how to add a fun touch to any space in your home using personalized wooden names!

Here I’ll show how I customized some unpainted names and added them to our board & batten hook wall. Now this space is practical AND pretty!

Many thanks to CraftCuts.com for providing me with our personalized wooden names and for sponsoring today’s post. All opinions are 100% my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that support WTSHB!

Personalized Wooden Names for a Board & Batten Hook Wall

We have two little boys in our family (and a messy husband), so that means lots of hats, backpacks, jackets, briefcases, and the like.

These items used to always (and I mean always) end up on the floor of some room (I said the boys were little and the husband messy).

Stuff was EVERYWHERE.

Momma here got real tired real quick with the constant pick-ups all over the place, so I decided to turn a blank wall in our long hallway into a board & batten wall with HOOKS!

Now it serves as a sort of mudroom/hall closet, and y’all, it has saved my sanity, for real.

Plus, since we added some fancy shmancy wooden names for all four of us, it’s now uber pretty too!

Our Personalized Wooden Names

As a proper Southern girl, I love me some good personalization. Always have, always will.

Slap a monogram or name on something and it’ll set my heart a’flutter.

That’s why I love CraftCuts! They can make you literally anything. Wood, metal, foam, plastic, vinyl…you name it, they can whip something up for you.

Years ago, I had them make me the cutest (and tiniest) monogram of my and my husband’s initials for our red burlap heart Valentine’s Day wreath.

And they make awesome non-personalized cutouts too, like the super-precise USA map I used for my patriotic door hanger, and a heart for our dual-sided Valentine’s Day door hanger.

I’ve had this name idea floating around in my head for some time, so when CraftCuts reached out with a partnership opp, I jumped at the chance!

Here are all the details on our personalized wooden names from CraftCuts that we used for this board & batten hook wall:

Product: Connected Wood Letters
Font: Lavanderia
Finish: Unpainted
Height: 7″
Thickness: 1/4″
Width: Varied based on number of letters
Connection Type: Letter

Their website is super user-friendly and you can see exactly what you’ll be getting with their handy preview:

Supplies

We have a modern farmhouse theme going on in our home (or as my husband calls it: Farmhouse Chic…it’s so cute how he likes to pretend that he has a clue about interior design), so I wanted to stain the wooden names a dark brown.

That way, they’d match some other items we’ve already DIYed, and they’d also go well with the bronze hooks that we installed on the wall.

Here’s what I used to customize our unpainted wooden names and hang them:

Dark brown stain & paper towels
Light brown furniture wax, brush, and rag
Painter’s pyramids
Disposable latex gloves
Small Command Strips, cut in half with scissors

Our Board & Batten Hook Wall: The Blank Before

Here’s how the wall looked when we first moved in over three years ago (sorry for the terrible photos).

As you can see, it was a big blank area of beige blahness that served no purpose.

So I hired my retired dad (just kidding…he worked for free like a proper father and grandpa), and he turned that area into a practical space that we all use multiple times every day now.

Since this space is off our kitchen, just down the hall from our garage, AND in between the boys’ bedrooms, it serves as the perfect spot to keep everyone’s stuff organized and easily accessible.

And most importantly, off the floor…and off Mom’s last nerve.

Make sure you check out the full tutorial for all the details on how we made this DIY board and batten wall with hooks in our hallway!

After Papa finished up the main components, the hubs installed the hooks and swapped out the hallway’s light fixtures, then our painter came and worked his magic.

Here’s how this board & batten hook wall has looked for the past year or so…nice and functional, but it still needed something to complete the space.

ENTER WOODEN NAMES!

Our Unpainted Personalized Wooden Names

Here’s how our four wooden names looked when they arrived.

They come pre-sanded and are ready for paint or stain, so right out of the box, I was able to dive right into to DIYing them.

Staining The Wooden Names

First thing up was getting my stain on! I set up my work area in the garage while the boys were at school then got to work.

Step 1: Using a paper towel, applied stain to the front and sides of all wooden names and let sit for several minutes.
Step 2: Using a new clean paper towel, gently wiped off excess stain. Let dry completely.

And here’s how they look in all their drying stained glory:

Adding Furniture Wax to the Wooden Names

After the stain was dry, I decided to finish the names with some light brown furniture wax.

This would provide a nice seal and also help bring out the wood grain while adding the tiniest bit of sheen.

Step 3: Using a paint brush, applied a light coating of furniture wax to all of the newly-stained wooden names. Let sit for several minutes.
Step 4: Using a rag, gently buffed out all the wax. Let dry completely.

And here’s how the wooden names looked after a good waxing:

Hanging The Wooden Names

Once the wax was dried, it was time to hang these names! Some Command Strips took care of the task, no problemo.

Step 5: Cut small Command Strips in half so they are skinny enough to be completely hidden behind the wooden letters.
Step 6: Peeled backing off one side of a pair of halved Command Strips and applied to the back of a wooden name.
- Since these names weigh next to nothing, I only used two pairs on each.
Step 7: Peeled the wall-side backings off the Command Strips and hung each name to the wall.

Our Board & Batten Hook Wall: The Personalized After

And here’s how our board & batten hook wall looks now with our personalized wooden names!

I just love ’em. They really add the perfect personalized touch to this space that, as part of a long and narrow hallway, is often neglected in the decor arena.

Plus, the names help to identify the four sections of the board & batten hook wall, so each person’s belongings are now (more) likely to stay organized and together.