Adventures in Do-It-Yourself: Oak Wall Edition

When we bought the house, it had two walls with hideous wall paper.  I had a wallpaper party and we tore it down.  Only to be faced with two amazing examples of horrible dry wall.  Hmmn...originally I wanted to paint both walls a turquoise color.  That was out of consideration unless I wanted to skim both walls.  What else?

I have been eyeing the reclaimed wood walls on Pinterest.  Most people use pallet wood.  The hubster was not keen on pallet wood - fears of bug infestation.  On a whim, I checked Lumber Liquidators site for unfinished flooring.  Bingo!

We took advantage of Labor Day sales and snagged 180sqft for $190.  It's unfinished and extremely imperfect white oak.   If you're considering this for flooring, be advised that it is a lot of small pieces, so your floor will look busy.  But it works well for a feature wall.

First thing first  - every board had a number written on it in pencil, so a sanding was in order.

Once sanded, I had it in my head that I didn't want to stain them, or paint them and I wanted the wood to look older. So we burned them.  With a torch.  In the garage.  Safety first kids! (Disclaimer, burn things away from your home.)

Prepping it (see above) took much longer than putting it up.  With minimal tools (hammers, nail gun, stud finder), the tongue and grove went up smoothly.  In one weekend, we had the whole wall up.

I am insanely happy with how it turned out.   I still need to go out and buy new outlet covers and put a coat of clear poly on it, but the wall looks amazing.  I was nervous to burn every piece, thinking it would be too dark, but I love how it turned out.

Once winter hits, we'll replace the patio door and put the remainder of our wood up on that wall.