I'm excited to share this one with you. This is not my own creative genius, and I've seen it done over and over on other blogs and on houzz and pinterest etc. And in spite of that, I still had to have it in our own bedroom. I don't know how many times I've blogged and asked you to ignore the stacks of pallet wood in the background as it's for a future project. Well this, my friends, IS that project. We did a feature wall behind our bed with pallet wood for a really earthy, organic feel.
We very closely followed the method from another blog that was so inspiring and their finished product is stunning. Where they chose to whitewash their pallet wood, we wanted ours to be a bit darker because everything else is light and airy in the room.
All the pallets, except for one, were pallets left at our construction site during our build, so we TRULY reduced, reused, and recycled. One of the helpful tips from the blog I referenced above is to just cut the pallets apart rather than trying to remove each nail and screw. So we invested in a couple $5 demolition blades for our sawzall and with just a few blisters on Brent's hands to show for it, we finished taking them all apart in one lunch hour.
Then they sat in our garage for a long time.
We got around to sanding them down just enough to get rid of the splinters etc but still keeping all the hard earned character on the boards maybe a month or two later. Then they sat some more. In fact, they sat in the garage until moving day, at which point we bundled them into groups by width, taped the bundles and threw them onto the moving truck so they could sit in our new garage for a few more days. :) Actually almost two weeks. Once we figured out our schedule for all the subs coming back to fix things etc, we dedicated all day Friday to this project. In preparation, I stained all the boards the day before.
I experimented a lot with stain as usual. I didn't want them to look stained, but we had a lot of pallets that were brand new wood and just weren't rich enough. So I came up with 2 different mixtures, and 2 different techniques. Both of them involved thinning out the stain with mineral spirits so it didn't go on too dark. Both mixtures had special walnut and weathered oak with varying levels of mineral spirits, and some I brushed on and wiped off. Others I rubbed on in random patches. Overall I think they all came out really natural looking. That said, some of the boards were so weathered that I didn't touch them at all!
The plan was to hang plywood on the wall using just a few screws so that if we want to change this out in the next couple years we won't have such a heinous patch job to do on our walls, and then we were planning to attach the pallet boards with liquid nails. The thinking was that the nail gun would be fastest, but the pallet wood was all different thicknesses so we'd have to change out the brad sizes for each board and that would be a pain.
I think the hardest part of the project was hanging the plywood because it was heavy, and the walls are 10 feet tall, and we were trying to get level and drill only into studs. We got that done the night before as well so we could start early on Friday with hanging the actual boards. So we bought the liquid nails, and just before we got started we changed our minds figuring the liquid nails wouldn't firm up fast enough and we'd need brad nails anyway, so we did wood glue for extra hold with varying lengths of the brads in our nail gun. I also had visions of drippy liquid nail accidents on our brand new, highly upgraded, carpet! It worked out great. I'd guess that 95% or more of the brads went only into the plywood so that's a win, right? But, I had to run for my daily trip to Lowes/HD to pick up additional lengths of the brad nails before we could start, so we didn't hang our first board until around 1030am I'd guess. So much for an early start!
We set up our newly acquired chop saw in the master bathroom, and that became our work station. :)
So this is how far we got by the time we started getting hungry around lunchtime. But we powered through and skipped lunch. :)
And the finished wall:
Honestly, we set up our bed and these airy curtains with the free nightstands I repaired and painted, and I started to panic because it all looked lame and amateur. We took the curtains down to work on this wall, and the wall itself was kind of lame even with the wood. But the whole vision came together with the wood wall, the airy curtains, the furniture, the bedding I adapted to make an oversized king duvet out of two king duvets... and a beautiful afghan throw I ordered from Carolyn at BlackberryCrochet on Etsy. I so wish my nana were still with us as I'd have asked her to make me a special afghan in a heartbeat, but I searched to find one that reminded me of something she would make rather than something I could buy in a store, and Carolyn did an absolutely beautiful job. I'm still torn on what piece of furniture to set our tv on, but I'm not in a huge hurry. Just walking in and seeing our marshmallowy dreamy cloud bed is good enough for me for now. Best night sleep ever!
How about a two-fer? Here are some pics of our master bathroom as well.
We didn't do much in here aside from hang curtains, towels, add a couple plants etc. I did paint the counter stool for my vanity, but that's about it. Oh, well not counting the chandelier we hand-beaded. :)
I'm not loving the shower curtain situation. I love the fabric, but the tile goes all the way up our 10 foot wall, so the standard size curtain seems wrong to me. I'm thinking about cutting it up and adding panels of something to extend the length. My only worry with that is the vertical stripes on the ticking might look crazy with horizontal strips of a different fabric. What do you think? I also have new curtain rings that I've been meaning to swap out.
And although I love the bright airiness of the room, I'm feeling like it needs something with a little weight/depth/texture. I'm thinking about painting the mirror either something rustic or maybe like a dark charcoal. It's just too shiny, and new, and sterile looking. I have no idea what to put on the vanity top, if anything. I haven't even used all my drawer space, and I have half my linen closet wide open, and 3/4 of brent's linen closet is wide open. So "stuff" on the counters would just be for looks, and I do think it's in need of something. Try to ignore the yellow soap and tissue box - coincidence that they're yellow. I haven't picked up soap pumps yet, and the tissues have been a constant necessity with my allergies lately!
I sort of picture a giant rattan basket with towels on the floor near the tub, but it seems silly to take the towels out of the linen closet when we've got all that storage space not in use! We've never had this much bathroom storage before and don't know what to do with it all yet. :) Good problem to have I suppose. Maybe a bath rug in front of the tub? Help me out people!
So that's where the master bedroom and bathroom are today. They need some work, but nothing urgent! Lots more rooms to come. Stay tuned!
We very closely followed the method from another blog that was so inspiring and their finished product is stunning. Where they chose to whitewash their pallet wood, we wanted ours to be a bit darker because everything else is light and airy in the room.
All the pallets, except for one, were pallets left at our construction site during our build, so we TRULY reduced, reused, and recycled. One of the helpful tips from the blog I referenced above is to just cut the pallets apart rather than trying to remove each nail and screw. So we invested in a couple $5 demolition blades for our sawzall and with just a few blisters on Brent's hands to show for it, we finished taking them all apart in one lunch hour.
 |
| I swear I was helping - but somebody had to take a picture! |
Then they sat in our garage for a long time.
We got around to sanding them down just enough to get rid of the splinters etc but still keeping all the hard earned character on the boards maybe a month or two later. Then they sat some more. In fact, they sat in the garage until moving day, at which point we bundled them into groups by width, taped the bundles and threw them onto the moving truck so they could sit in our new garage for a few more days. :) Actually almost two weeks. Once we figured out our schedule for all the subs coming back to fix things etc, we dedicated all day Friday to this project. In preparation, I stained all the boards the day before.
I experimented a lot with stain as usual. I didn't want them to look stained, but we had a lot of pallets that were brand new wood and just weren't rich enough. So I came up with 2 different mixtures, and 2 different techniques. Both of them involved thinning out the stain with mineral spirits so it didn't go on too dark. Both mixtures had special walnut and weathered oak with varying levels of mineral spirits, and some I brushed on and wiped off. Others I rubbed on in random patches. Overall I think they all came out really natural looking. That said, some of the boards were so weathered that I didn't touch them at all!
The plan was to hang plywood on the wall using just a few screws so that if we want to change this out in the next couple years we won't have such a heinous patch job to do on our walls, and then we were planning to attach the pallet boards with liquid nails. The thinking was that the nail gun would be fastest, but the pallet wood was all different thicknesses so we'd have to change out the brad sizes for each board and that would be a pain.
I think the hardest part of the project was hanging the plywood because it was heavy, and the walls are 10 feet tall, and we were trying to get level and drill only into studs. We got that done the night before as well so we could start early on Friday with hanging the actual boards. So we bought the liquid nails, and just before we got started we changed our minds figuring the liquid nails wouldn't firm up fast enough and we'd need brad nails anyway, so we did wood glue for extra hold with varying lengths of the brads in our nail gun. I also had visions of drippy liquid nail accidents on our brand new, highly upgraded, carpet! It worked out great. I'd guess that 95% or more of the brads went only into the plywood so that's a win, right? But, I had to run for my daily trip to Lowes/HD to pick up additional lengths of the brad nails before we could start, so we didn't hang our first board until around 1030am I'd guess. So much for an early start!
We set up our newly acquired chop saw in the master bathroom, and that became our work station. :)
 |
| Here we had marked the edges and studs with tape |
 |
| And the dang plywood that caused us so much grief... |
So this is how far we got by the time we started getting hungry around lunchtime. But we powered through and skipped lunch. :)
And the finished wall:
Honestly, we set up our bed and these airy curtains with the free nightstands I repaired and painted, and I started to panic because it all looked lame and amateur. We took the curtains down to work on this wall, and the wall itself was kind of lame even with the wood. But the whole vision came together with the wood wall, the airy curtains, the furniture, the bedding I adapted to make an oversized king duvet out of two king duvets... and a beautiful afghan throw I ordered from Carolyn at BlackberryCrochet on Etsy. I so wish my nana were still with us as I'd have asked her to make me a special afghan in a heartbeat, but I searched to find one that reminded me of something she would make rather than something I could buy in a store, and Carolyn did an absolutely beautiful job. I'm still torn on what piece of furniture to set our tv on, but I'm not in a huge hurry. Just walking in and seeing our marshmallowy dreamy cloud bed is good enough for me for now. Best night sleep ever!
How about a two-fer? Here are some pics of our master bathroom as well.
We didn't do much in here aside from hang curtains, towels, add a couple plants etc. I did paint the counter stool for my vanity, but that's about it. Oh, well not counting the chandelier we hand-beaded. :)
I'm not loving the shower curtain situation. I love the fabric, but the tile goes all the way up our 10 foot wall, so the standard size curtain seems wrong to me. I'm thinking about cutting it up and adding panels of something to extend the length. My only worry with that is the vertical stripes on the ticking might look crazy with horizontal strips of a different fabric. What do you think? I also have new curtain rings that I've been meaning to swap out.
And although I love the bright airiness of the room, I'm feeling like it needs something with a little weight/depth/texture. I'm thinking about painting the mirror either something rustic or maybe like a dark charcoal. It's just too shiny, and new, and sterile looking. I have no idea what to put on the vanity top, if anything. I haven't even used all my drawer space, and I have half my linen closet wide open, and 3/4 of brent's linen closet is wide open. So "stuff" on the counters would just be for looks, and I do think it's in need of something. Try to ignore the yellow soap and tissue box - coincidence that they're yellow. I haven't picked up soap pumps yet, and the tissues have been a constant necessity with my allergies lately!
I sort of picture a giant rattan basket with towels on the floor near the tub, but it seems silly to take the towels out of the linen closet when we've got all that storage space not in use! We've never had this much bathroom storage before and don't know what to do with it all yet. :) Good problem to have I suppose. Maybe a bath rug in front of the tub? Help me out people!
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| I LOVE our little mini windows for that extra bit of natural light by the sinks. Our builder fought me on this knowing it'd be only a tiny sliver of a window and he thought it was silly, but I'm so glad we stuck to our guns. |
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| I changed out the bulbs in our other chandeliers... I will probably change these out too. These giant clunky bulbs are like wearing combat boots with a strand of pearls. |
So that's where the master bedroom and bathroom are today. They need some work, but nothing urgent! Lots more rooms to come. Stay tuned!
love the pallet look! I agree in painting the vanity mirror to darken it up a bit. As for by the tub...it's such a statement in itself..a rug would be good but don't want to overdo it..
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