My hubby and I did a DIY board and batten in our office/playroom. We have orange peel so we used 1/4 inch panel board (looks like dry erase) for the paneling and mdf for the battens. We spackled seams and nail holes with joint compound then sanded and primed. Then we spackled again, sanded and primed again. I was worried we would see marks on the walls in certain areas we spackled but my husband said it should be fine because it felt smooth to the touch. We assumed the paint would cover it. We painted 1 coat so far (in the same high gloss that is on our doors) and you can see right through the paint and can clearly see the spackle! It is really bad when the sunlight hits a certain way but at night with just the light on the walls actually looks fine. Obviously this needs to look good not just at night, lol, but the severity of how it looks depends on the lighting.

What did we do wrong? How do we fix it? Can we fix it? Will more coats of paint help? My husband thinks maybe he should just skim coat the entire space between each set of battens - but that would be a TON of extra work.

Any suggestions? Thank you!