Woven Wood Accent Wall: Part 1

WARNING:

Prepare yourself to enter the dangerous zone of a crazy, creative brain that has access to power tools. I’m making sure you’re prepared for what will seem like an insane project. I just couldn’t keep this tutorial to myself. Just in case someone out there, as ambitious as I am, needs a crazy puzzle wood accent wall project. You never know.

Once upon a time, I saw a table in the Pottery Barn catalog that had a parquet wood look. Parquet is French and it refers to work that is made from a geometric pattern of laid or inlaid wood. I thought,”Hmm, I wonder if I could make an accent wall in my dining room arch that looks like woven wood?” So I grabbed some graph paper, colored pencils, my computer and went to work.

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Get that idea on paper!

My first stage of planning meant that I looked online to see what type of wood was available. A few years ago I did a pallet wall upstairs in the game room, for which I collected a lot of discarded pallets. I had to disassemble the pallets, wash them, sand them and then fit their irregularities into a pleasing pattern on the wall. The entire thing only cost me $26 in supplies for plywood backing and screws. The prep time, however, was definitely high. It was an awesome labor of love that we still enjoy. The pallet wall really adds character with a bit of sound proofing to that otherwise noisy room. I decided that for the woven wood accent wall, I would buy pre-stained and cut planks of wood. The planks were roughly 4 inches wide and 4 feet long and came in a variety of tonal neutrals. It was about $24 for a box of 8 planks.

This woven wood (parquet) accent wall would take some planning. If the planks were four inches wide, then I should do the sections between the planks about eight inches square. I drew a scaled down drawing of the recessed arch on some graph paper and then quickly drew out the woven wood pattern and added color.

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Planning the Construction

Now that I had a basic pattern sketched, I estimated about how much wood I would need. I determined that roughly four boxes of the planks would work, and I could always buy another box if needed. Fortunately, I had a few gift cards to Home Depot to put towards the purchase. I also had some left over plywood my friend gave me from one of her projects, so I thought that would work well for the cut squares.

I recently received a miter saw, or cut off saw, for my birthday from my husband. Nothing says I love you like a power tool, am I right? I was itching to use it on this project.

Now the one thing that was holding up this woven wood accent wall dream was how I would attach the wood pieces to the wall? I didn’t really want a bunch of nail heads to fill and I would never be able to match the prefab stains on the wood planks. Hmmmm? Perhaps the best way to avoid a marred surface or hitting the refrigerator water lines in that same wall would be to use liquid nails. It could be a pain to remove later… but I don’t plan on taking this down any time soon. If anyone else owns this house after us and wants to take it down, all I have to say is, “May the odds be ever in your favor.” You used the voice, didn’t you?

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Measure Twice, Cut Once

This project definitely takes some patience, but can be split up over a few days or weekends. I recommend taking your time, measuring twice and cutting once. If applicable, insisting that the Home Depot guys cut as you instruct and not rely on their own “figuring.”

I ended up getting additional plywood without a heavy grain. It was necessary to figure out the cuts that would account for the thickness of the saw blade and still leave me with eight inch strips of wood. Home Depot is great about cutting the plywood down for you. This is perfect because I don’t own a table saw and it would be tricky to fit the entire piece of 4 x 8 feet of plywood in my car.

The workers at Home Depot were friendly and compliant with cutting, they just thought that they knew better when it came to measurements. They didn’t. I had a few strips of wood that were about a quarter of an inch off. Super annoying but I behaved in the Texas way and “blessed their hearts” at the effort. Hopefully this was a learning experience for them- calculate for the blade for future cuts. I learned from this experience- never bring a nervous dog with you that you need to “walk around” while the saw is going.

I took the eight foot plywood strips home and cut them into squares myself, with my circular saw. Not the most exact way to do it, but I could only trust myself to care about accuracy at this point. Each step of instructions will have some tips and notes from when I did it and how I would do it differently next time.   

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Here are some crock pot ideas for the few days that you will be working on your woven wood accent wall. melt in your mouth pot roast or tomato basil parmesan soup or slow cooker balsamic chicken

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Supply List

• Boxes of weathered hardwood board (I used 4 boxes)
• Plywood I prefer it with no large grain pattern I used 1 board cut into 8”x 8” squares and I used some additional plywood left over from a project
• Liquid Nails adhesive for paneling and molding I used 4. It’s easy to return any unused tubes with or without a receipt
• Stain(s), I used Minwax Classic Gray 271 and Espresso 273
• Caulking gun
• Utility knife
• Long nail, or something to break the seal on the Liquid Nails
• Tarp or drop cloth/plastic
• Small picture nails
• Hammer
• Circular saw
• Miter saw
• T-square
• Tape measure
• Chalk
• Pencil
• Dust mask
• Ear protection
• Safety goggles/glasses
• Clean cotton rags
• Latex or vinyl gloves to protect your hands while staining
• Palm sander
• Sand paper, around 220 grit
• Scrap paper
• Chalk or colored pencil
• Yardstick or some type of long straightedge

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Instructions:

Step 1:

Make sure to use the extension on the vacuum while cleaning the wall to eliminate any dust or cobwebs. Remove any outlet or light switch covers and put them in a safe place. Remove the baseboard because the new baseboard can cover the edge of the applied accent wood as opposed to butting up next to it.

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Step 2:

Remove all of the boards from the packaging and organize them by color and tone. It’s important to know what you have to work with to utilize them in a balanced color pattern. Turns out that the boards I had the fewest of were the darkest color and so I made sure to use it sparingly on the overall pattern. I wanted to avoid purchasing more packages of wood just for that one color. You could totally use bare wood planks and stain it yourself, I just didn’t have that many different stains on hand and I kind of wanted to try out this product.

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Step 3:

Cut the plywood into 8 inch squares. Originally, I had Home Depot cut the plywood into approximately 8 inch strips, lengthwise. I took those strips and measured eight inches from the edge and then used my t-square to get a 90 degree angle which I marked with my pencil. Using my circular saw to cut on the outside of the pencil line. The blade usually takes out a quarter inch of wood, so cutting on the outside of the line allows the final measurement to remain true.

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Step 4:

Once you have all of the squares cut ( you will have rectangles left at the end, but they may come in handy for partial pieces on the edges of your wall, so hold on to those.) sand the edges to eliminate splinters. Dust off the squares.

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Step 5:

Place your cut and dust free squares on an old towel or tarp. Wearing disposable gloves, use a cotton rag to dip into the gray stain and rub it in the direction of the grain, all over each square. I had to do a few batches of squares because they didn’t all fit on my table at once. Four squares were stained at a time. I rubbed the stain on four and then starting from the first square I stained, I wiped off the residual stain with a different clean, dry, lint free rag.

The gray stain did not look right once I held it up to the sorted wood stacks. The darker boards made the gray stain seem too light and a little blue looking so I decided to coat it with a brown to even out the tone and have all the boards more cohesive. I repeated the staining process with the brown stain over the gray stain. Also, the original plywood that I was using had a strong grain to it. I thought it would look fine, but quickly determined that it looked too much like tiger stripes.

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Step 6:

All of the cut plywood squares were stained with the gray stain as a base coat and then the brown stain over that. I lost count, but it was about 80+ squares of 8″ plywood pieces. Phew! Happy with the final results, I was ready to move on to the next stage of the project. All of this prep pretty much took the better part of the day. I would have to start the adhering the wood pieces to the wall the next day. 

What better way to make a house a home than to do a project that is completely unique? 💙

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Posts to Personalize Your Space:

Part 2: Woven Wood Accent Wall

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