Remember that time I wrote about how I wasn’t confident enough to try wood projects like wainscoting? Well, I changed my mind.

Just days after writing that column, I saw a video of someone applying board and batten with Velcro strips instead of glue. She made it look easy, and with that, she also made it look tempting.

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While laying in my bed, I stared at my plain hallway and realized it’d be the perfect place to attempt a trial run. It could be cheap, somewhat quick, and just about the easiest place in my house to experiment with wood wall elements.

But what started off as a cheap project almost turned into a several-hundred-dollar disaster.

After reading more about the Velcro strips, which did not get great reviews, I decided to just do the project the good-old-fashioned way: with wood glue and a nail gun. I don’t own a nail gun, but I found Home Depot had them available to rent for about $30 for four hours.

Having used one before, I felt confident that nailing the pieces on would be, by far, the easiest part of the project.

Instead, I dreaded sawing the boards by hand, as I don’t own an electric miter saw. After buying a few primed MDF boards, some trim pieces, a quart of paint and a few other supplies I needed (which cost about $70 total), I put off the installation until I knew I had the energy — and the patience — to start.

Once I decided to begin sawing, I prepared myself for frustration. I’ve had issues in the past with mismeasurements, wonky cuts and other problems that come with using a cheap miter box and saw.

But this time around, I swam through this part of the job like a dream. I was floored at how quickly I’d cut through each piece of wood — it felt like cutting butter.

With that, I was on a roll. I excitedly asked my husband, Aaron, to run to the Home Depot about five minutes away from our house to rent a cordless finish nailer. Attaching the wood to the walls, I thought, shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.

This is where things took a turn for the worst.

I had asked Aaron to confirm at the rental desk which nails we needed for the nailer. He returned with a box of nails that were the right size, but weren’t meant to be used in a nail gun. When I tried to refer to the manual to find the specific nails needed, I realized the nailer didn’t come with one.

Aaron kindly returned to Home Depot and asked someone else at the store to help him find the correct nails while I scoured the internet for videos on how to use that specific model of nail gun (since it didn’t come with a manual). When he got home, I loaded those bad boys into the nail gun and fired a test round into a scrap piece of wood.

Nothing came out. I realized the gun was jammed, which I had luckily learned how to fix through a video. I figured it must have just been some fluke misfire and proceeded to try another test round.

Again, nothing fired into the wood. Instead, I was horrified to find the sharp end of a nail sticking out of the side of the tool, the rest of it jammed somewhere deep within the gun.

A pang of dread rushed through my body as I looked up the price of the nailer, which I assumed was now broken and I’d have to replace. Coughing up $400 was not necessarily in the plans that day.

We realized this nail gun came in two different models: one that used straight nails, and one that used nails at an angle. We bought the former but needed the latter.

Unsure of our next move, Aaron took a third trip up to Home Depot to try to get the right nails as I frantically tried to fix the nailer.

He called me from the store: “They are sold out of the angled nails.” This, readers, is when I absolutely lost my mind. The store that had rented us the nail gun did not have the nails we needed to use said nail gun.

Aaron, who is much more rational and personable than I am, wound up talking to someone at the rental desk who dug up about two-dozen nails left over from other rentals of the same gun and gave them to us for free (which I personally think is the least they could have done at that point).

When he got home for the third time, I still hadn’t figured out the jammed nail debacle, but I felt a new wave of motivation knowing — hoping — we finally had the right nails.

By some miracle, I figured out how to open up a compartment of the nail gun that exposed the top half of the nail, and I was able to carefully pull it out with pliers. The force of the gun had blown the nail into a “U” shape.

Despite a hole the nail left in the rubber, the gun was finally fully functional.

I was right that nailing the boards to the wall only took 10 minutes — that is, three Home Depot trips, two boxes of nails and one anxiety attack later.

I learned a few lessons that day. One: Don’t rely on Home Depot to provide information about tools or how to use them. In fact, don’t rely on Home Depot for anything at all.

Two: It might be time to invest in some of my own power tools, so let me know if you have any affordable recommendations.

Three: I’m lucky to have a husband whose patience makes up for the lack of mine.

And four: Once you have the right tools and know how to use them, board and batten isn’t nearly as much of a challenge as I’d anticipated.

Theresa "Tess" Bennett is on maternity leave and will return soon. Email Tess your questions at homewithtess@gmail.com and keep up with her on Instagram @homewithtess

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