We've Got a Plan

In case you missed it, I last wrote about finding a way to organize our back entry and had board and batten as my inspiration for design. This is the plan I came up with:

The total wall width is 71" and I chose 56" as the height because as you can see in the original post, there is a fuse box right there (for the portion of the house that was added on about 30 years ago) so I wanted the top of the moulding to come just underneath that. I wanted the "frame" of the board and batten to be the same width all around, with the "interior" battens narrower than that, and then decided how many battens I wanted. Then I just did some math to come up with the width of the spacing. I also decided to do two rows because I know there is a lot of stuff that needs to be hung up and I didn't want it to be all smushed together.

I went to Home Depot with my amazing brother-in-law (who you'll see a lot of coming up!) and we decided to use MDF for everything except the two horizontal boards that would have the hooks. He recommended to use wood for these because then we'd be able to screw them right into the studs and it would be able to hold a lot more weight. Kids have heavy knapsacks these days, you know!

I also picked out these hooks for the top row and these hooks for the bottom row.

Actually, they both have a chrome finish but I couldn't find the first one in chrome online. It wasn't my first choice, but they go with the handles of the closets that house the washer/dryer directly across from where they will be hanging. One of these days I can change them up or spray paint them something different.

The first step was painting the wall behind where everything will be installed. Then we removed the old baseboard and shoe moulding. Man, was that hard to pry off! (Note: hammer and crowbar below.)

We left the existing hooks up so we'd have something to hang our stuff on in the meantime. Then we put up the vertical pieces on either edge, keeping my original plans handy. Remember, measure twice, cut once! :-) And after that the two wood horizontal pieces where the hooks would end up going. We used glue and then screws to make sure it was in nice and tight.

Stay tuned for the next step!