DIY Wood Feature Wall

Not sure if you've had the chance to take a look yet, but earlier this week I posted before and after pictures of all of the renovations that we've completed so far. Well, almost all. There are still a few more pictures that will come at a later date...

The very last one in the post is the master bathroom reveal, the most recent reno to be completed. It is the masculine counterpart to my more feminine bathroom, and it suits Scott perfectly. But my most favorite part? My DIY wood wall!

As I mentioned in my previous post, that space was deemed essentially useless when we weren't able to tear it out and make a bigger shower. We decided to stick with using it as shelving, but wanted to go a bit more modern with it than it was before. If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time you'll know that I get quite a few of my ideas from Pinterest, and that is the case here as well.

At first I wanted to make that space look like a built-in; something that was meant to be there, not just there because we couldn't change it. In looking for examples that I could show Scott I came across pictures of people using wood as the feature wall and I loved it! While Scott liked how it looked in the pictures, he was not a fan of us doing it. Mostly because it would be a lot more work than simply painting that one wall a different accent color and calling it a day. But eventually I was able to convince him that it could be done with not too much effort and he gave in.

While at first we were going to try to track down some actual barn wood or something similar, we ended up deciding to make our own. So after a trip to Home Depot, we came home with some nice pieces (I tried to pick the ones with the most knots, scrapes, dark/light color variations...anything that had visual interest) and a couple of different stains to play with.

Here is what we started with:

After testing out the different stains, we settled on a combination of two different ones: Grey and Jacobean.

First, we put on a VERY thick coat of the grey stain and let it sit for a while. In testing, we discovered the wood didn't suck up the grey very well so we pretty much just let it sit on there for ten or so minutes (at which point it was still fairly wet and hadn't soaked all the way in) before we wiped it off.

The result:

Some pieces (namely, the ones that already had more of a grey tinge to them) sucked it up better than the others. But we were going for a somewhat rustic, uneven finish so that was just fine by us!

We followed this up with Jacobean. On some pieces I rubbed the stain off almost immediately after putting it on in order to get a bit lighter of a finish. On others, I put it on really thick and let it sit for 5 minutes. And on a couple of pieces, I even put on a second coat.

Once everything had dried overnight we put on a single coat of varnish in order to brighten them up just a little bit.

When all was said and done, this was what we ended up with:

When it came time to install, we cut the wood into pieces that fit the space and used a nail gun and finishing nails to attach them to the wall. We tried to put the most visually interesting pieces (the ones with the deep cuts or scratches or knots etc.) in the most visible places on the wall.

I absolutely love how it turned out, and it's what I look at every time I walk into that bathroom.

And what a good looking bathroom it is, if I do say so myself :)

Until next time...

D.