One trend that I’ve seen all over the place, from homes to offices to restaurants is the reclaimed wood wall. I even did one in my office remodel a little over a year ago. I loved how it turned out so much that I really wanted to have one in our home. You can purchase reclaimed wood from a number of sites where you can select the look and source of the wood. We didn’t have the budget to go that route and honestly I really wanted to do it ourselves so we opted for sourcing our own reclaimed wood. I went on craigslist and searched for free wooden crates and was able to find a few that way. We were also able to grab some from spotting a pile laying outside of a business down the road from our new house. To complete the wall we were able to use some of my in-laws old fence wood they had just laying around. To give the wood pallet pieces that old reclaimed look, I went to Home Depot and bought three different colors of wood stain, to brown and one grey stain. I applied the stain to the planks that we were able to salvage from the pallets with throw away paint brushes. The variation in color came from mixing the stains and just how the different woods look in the stain. I painted a layer on each board, let them sit for 10-15 minutes then wiped them down with a rag.
My husband has proven to be super handy. I already knew he loved to build his own things, he’s building a motorcycle from scratch with his dad right now in between working and working on the house, but welding, and working on cars is very different from building and working on a house. To prep the wall we screwed in thin boards of wood on the studs so that we weren’t putting the reclaimed wood wall directly on our existing wall. In case we ever want to pull the reclaimed wood off there will be a lot less holes that we will need to fill. Then we started from the bottom right corner and then built it up. We used a Brad Gun (air pressure gun for those who don’t know what a Brad Bun is, case I didn’t) with finish nails to secure the boards to the vertical pieces. The most fun part was deciding the order of the boards and which ones were going to go next to which and staggering the boards so that they look irregularly regular, it’s hard to explain.
Materials:
Wooden Pallets – FREE
Old Fence Wood – FREE
Finish Nails – $3.47 for 1lb pack
MinWax oil-based Wood Stains: Ebony, Special Walnut, and Classic Grey – $4.78 each
Throw Away Paint Brushes – $1.15 each
Total Project Cost – under $25.00
This was one project we were able to start and finish in one weekend and most likely the most fun, since it has such an impact in our living room. I absolutely love the transformation!
