Build Yourself A Beautiful Plank Wall

 

I have been obsessed with plank walls for at least the past 5 years.

It started while we were living in our old farmhouse.

Plank walls were all the rage. They were EVERYWHERE; Living Rooms, Bathrooms, Dinning Rooms, Bed Rooms, in Personal Homes and in Businesses. In fact, they were practically around every corner.

Can you say, “Trend?”

But who cares?! I LOVE THEM! I needed a plank wall in my life, but there really wasn’t a good space for it.

At one point, I was going to put one up in the Living Room. It didn’t “fit” or “go” with the room, but I didn’t care. I NEEDED ONE!

Thankfully The Hubz talked me down.

Looking back, I see how ridiculous that would have looked and am grateful The Hubz keeps a straight head. At the time, though, I thought he just hated the look and idea of a plank wall and so I dropped the topic.

Fast forward a few years and here we were in a new house with a new design to play with.

Because the idea of a plank Wall was originally shot down, I had buried the idea until I was in the middle of the Our Living Room Make Over and dealing with wallpaper.

Freaking wallpaper!

I brought the idea back up to The Hubz and HE LOVED IT!

Wait. What?!

I figured it would add a few hundred dollars to the makeover, but be worth every penny because I AM FINALLY GETTING MY PLANK WALL!

Maybe, it was those crazy pregnancy hormones that made my brain fail to process simple ideas, but it took a whole week before I put two and two together: I could take the boards from the North wall of the porch to build the plank wall.

A.k.a Free Wood!

The porch was stained the color, “Classic 80’s Honey- Orange.” I knew that repurposing this wood meant a lot of sanding. Was saving a few hundred bucks worth the extra hours in sanding? Yes! I mentally prepared myself for “a project” and set to work.

I pulled a single board off the wall and was more than happy to see the backside was raw.

Perfect! This saved me so much time.
My project just got easier. I pulled off all of the needed boards and brought them out to the barn.

The porch was done in pine boards. Pine is a very soft wood making it easy to pull out the nails. In fact, most of the finish nails stayed in the wall.

Once the boards were all out of the house, I grabbed my sander and went to work, lightly sanding the raw side. I wanted a fairly smooth surface to prevent splinters.

After sanding, it’s important to wipe down each board with a damp cloth. This ensures your boards are clean and ready for your finish.

Now is the fun part: the color. You can paint, stain, leave raw…. anything your little heart desires. For this plank wall I chose to stain the wood.

I used Minwax’s “Classic Gray.” I originally wanted “Driftwood”, but my local stores didn’t have that color in stock. If you know me, you know when I am ready to start a project there’s no waiting. So “Classic Gray” it was!

My method is a bit rushed and sloppy, but simple: Using a cloth, I dip in the can and rub the wood in the direction of the grain then rub off with a clean cloth. You can use any fabric for your cloth as long as it doesn’t “lint.”

If you have not perfected your method with stain, I would highly recommend doing a test board. This will allow you to play with different amounts of stain and pressures to get the desired look. Remember, with stain, a little goes a long way.

Once all of my boards were stained I left them to dry. We have a giant space in our barn. In our old house, these types of projects took over the Dining Room, disrupting life for the duration of the project. As awful as that was, I’m 100% certain that projects were completed at a faster rate! Remember that; there are Pros and Cons to everything!

Once the boards dried, I turned the project over to The Hubz and the Boys.
A perfect Father-Son project!

The boys got to work right away measuring the height and length of our wall. Once they had that, they started cutting the boards. Because I repurposed our boards from the porch, we had a variety of lengths. We started with a long board at the top of the wall. Here is were you’d want to make sure your “Start” line is straight. If your ceiling or wall is wavy, you will want to square your first board and go off of that line otherwise your wall will be crooked.

Once the first plank was in place, we just continued hanging boards until we were done. Starting at the top, we worked our way across each row before moving onto the next row.

Important Notes:

• Measuring the Height and Length of your wall helps you to determine how much wood you will need. If you don’t know your square footage, take these numbers to your local wood store.
• You will want to make certain the top line of boards is straight. This is VERY IMPORTANT. If you only double check one thing, make it this.
• Before hanging your boards, you will need to find the studs in your walls. Go ahead and mark the wall if that makes your life easier; you’re covering it anyhow!
• If you are in an apartment, you can hang “strapping” over the studs and hang your plank wall on that. This way if your landlord doesn’t love your new look as much as you, you can take it down and still get your security deposit back!
• Space your boards. This will allow for the natural expanding and shrinking of wood. A simple coin will do the job.
• We had (2) outlets on our wall. It’s easy to cut around them. If you are handy, you can adjust the outlet box to be even with the new wall. We actually let ours as they were, making the outlets “sunk-in.” They are hidden by the TV Stand. If we change the layout of that room, we may fix those outlets for a cleaner, more finished look.

The Boys finished our wall in a few hours. I love how the stain varies from board to board and how there is a bluish under tone on some of the pieces. Plank Walls might be a Trend and might even be on their way “out”, but I don’t care. I Love this wall.

I don’t use this room a lot; the Living Room is mostly the kid’s space, but every time I pass through or watch a family movie, I look over at that wall and smile. It truly warms my heart and makes me happy. Besides the natural beauty it adds to the room, my boys helped build it and THAT will never go out of style.