I'm planning on using timber cladding but want to use cladding that is about 2" x 1", stood on end away from the backing board.  This board on board/Yorkshire style will give a more three-dimensional effect than what is normally seen with tongue and groove style cladding due to the increased depth between slats.

 

However, I don't want to have the fixing screws/nails visible.

 

The two options I've come up with are shown here but both have issues.

 

Option 1 leaves the darker coloured slat untethered to the back board and thus it might be subject to warping away from the back board.  A fixing could be driven through the darker slat at 45 degrees into the back board but this might then impact the next light coloured slat's positioning if not fully flush.

 

Option two avoids this by having two fixings in the light coloured slat but increases the work(cost) of profiling the light coloured slat, leaves less wood to tether the dark slat to, and adds 50% more fixings.

 

The only other option would seem to be to have tongue and groove but just make the wood a lot thicker (but still nowhere near 2") and have thinner than normal tongues to allow more of a shadow gap between slats.

 

Am I overthinking this/making things difficult for myself?

 

Is there an easy solution?

 

This can't be the first time the issue has arisen.

use stainless steel brads