Barn wood accent wall

Some time ago I mentioned that I wanted to make changes to my craft room.  I really love the look of barn wood and decided I wanted to do an accent wall.  Barn wood is a pretty hot commodity, often selling for $5 a foot.  I needed 150 square feet, you can do the math.

Back in November of last year I had done photography for a couple that takes down barns and repurposes the wood for various projects.  Because they were pleased with the pictures I took of their properties they gave me the wood I needed for our project, even delivering it for free!  They told me about the barn from which this wood came, which makes it kinda neat.

Now I’m not gonna lie to you, this project is dirty.  Filthy. You will be filthy.  Your house will be filthy.  Even your pets may be filthy.  Prepare yourself.  Words cannot fully describe the filth.

First you need to know math.  I do not.  So this is where my husband’s talents were extremely important.  We took several measurements of the wall because we all know walls aren’t straight.  Then we measured every board, length and width.  We figured which boards would best be used together based on width.  Some boards were a foot wide, others 11 inches, etc.  There was a lot of variation.  We had two 15 foot boards and knew we wanted to use those without cutting them down except to size.  One of those boards would be used at the top and another in the middle of the wall since your eye is drawn there.  We had crown moulding that we removed but left our wide baseboard at the bottom of the wall.

In the picture below you see in the far left corner where the moulding was removed.  This allowed us to slip the first board right up under the existing moulding on the opposite walls.

Our wood is primarily red.  The boards are weathered and distressed.  If you like that look barn wood is for you.  I love the holes, scratches, variations of color and texture.  Please keep in mind that this is no doubt  lead-based paint.  White paint on barns has the highest concentration of lead.  You can seal the paint against chipping with a product called Zinsser clear binding primer. 

 

We used no more than three boards across.  When we came to the last row we had to splice in pieces that were about an inch and a half in height.  Perhaps you can see that in the above photo or the one below…

The boards were attached right into studs with a nail gun and 2 inch nails.  All the tools needed for this project were a measuring tape, square, hand-held circular saw, nail gun and we used a table saw to rip the small filler pieces at the bottom.  Most of the tools we used were borrowed from our friends.  (Thanks friends.)

When I sit at my computer this is my view…

A friend asked if I have any intention of hanging anything on the wall.  Absolutely not.  I consider myself a minimalist when it comes to decorating.  I surround myself with very few “things”.  I look at my wall as a work of art in itself.  Lately I go into the room for no reason other than to look at the wall.

I was also asked if I would finish the ends with boards or something.  Again, no.  I like the rough boards just meeting up to the adjoining walls.  But a person could certainly add a side board to finish the edge.

Recently a friend gave me this squirrel pen, knowing my love for squirrels.  Look how good he looks sitting on my desk next to that beautiful wood!

I am so happy with the way this project turned out.  I would do it again in a heartbeat.