Oh Sweet Weathered Pallet Wood Wall…

Let me start off mentioning this forewarning: this project busted my butt! Ok, now we can begin. I’ve always desired some type of rustic wood wall in my home. We are always on a budget, which allows me to only complete so many things within a certain amount of time but when I can find things on the cheap, the project money can go so much further. I was lucky enough to find these pallets that we used for this project from a friend that was giving them away. Score number 1 for me! I can’t tell you how excited I was that they were already weathered. And this is where it all began. You know how it is…when you find something for free it justifies spending money on everything else for the space, right?!  Let me start the pictures off by showing you my before photo. This was definitely not ever how I wanted this area to end up but just threw in some decor to fill the area a bit until we were ready for this project. I apologize in advance for the bad lighting in the before shots…cell phone shots are not always the best.

I started the whole project off by painting all of the furniture that I needed for the area. I used my homemade chalk paint that you can find here. I then sealed them with Minwax water based Poly. I found these bookshelves at a thrift store and I couldn’t believe how perfect they fit (seeing as I didn’t measure the space before I bought them). I will admit to playing those cards very often. The TV console is from Sam’s Club quite a few years ago. I can’t believe that a piece of furniture can have so many nooks and crannies to get my little paint brush into. Needless to say, it was not my favorite piece of furniture to paint. I did use my Graco paint sprayer to paint the bookshelves. I will say it is a big time saver to use a paint sprayer and I knew that these bookcases would have taken forever to paint with a brush. During the whole process a tarantula came flying through the sky and landed right beside my bookcase (thankfully not on my head)!!  After I screamed and almost had a heart attack, I realized that it was a dead tarantula and it was probably dropped by a bird…which doesn’t make me any more happy about the situation. This photo is as close as my body would willingly get to the dead tarantula to take a photo.

 

After I was finished painting the furniture and singing the hallelujah chorus, I pushed the bookshelves into the space beside the TV console to make sure they fit. I know, I do things backwards and sometimes forget important small details that should come before painting.  You should obviously make sure everything fits before you paint it. I’m stressing myself out just by writing out this story.

 

 

Yay they fit!!  My favorite pastime while I’m painting is to watch “I Love Lucy”…I’ve probably seen all of the episodes 10x. My sweet hubs got me the whole TV series last year for Christmas. If you have ever seen the episode “Redecorating” when Lucy and Ethel are wallpapering Lucy’s bedroom…yep, I can be like that sometimes with measuring.

 

I was not looking forward to that next step of painting the TV console, so I sat there and stared at it for 30 minutes before I started. And when I clapped, closed my eyes, snapped my fingers, sent positive paint vibes to the console and it still wasn’t painted on its own, I decided to get started. And boy was I glad when this was in the past. After I taped off the windows of the console, to paint it I used my chalk paint recipe with a  2″ Purdy paint brush. Some of the smaller crevices, I needed a smaller brush.

 

So finally what we have all been waiting for…the pallet wall!!! I first have to say that we purchased a Ryobi reciprocating saw and these saws are the best things since well, I’m not sure what…but they are amazing!!! We bought it so that we could cut the pallets apart and slice right through the nails without killing ourselves trying to get them all apart. BEST PURCHASE EVER!! They slice right through those nails just like butter. And I’m sorry that I forgot to take a picture of this amazing process but just trust me, you won’t regret this purchase if you are doing any type of pallet project where they need to be torn apart.

 

After we cut the pallets apart, I sanded them all down. This brings out the amazing color even more that the initial existing weathered color. I thought about staining them and even tried staining one board just to see what color I liked better and we then decided to keep the natural weathered look. This was the best decision in the whole process. I love the natural weathered color. I tried to keep as many nails in the boards as I could. I just love this rustic look…and rusty nails just add so much character! After I sanded the boards, my husband got out our air compressor and sprayed them all down to get rid of all of the dust. When the pallets were all ready, my husband mounted the TV and then found the studs in the wall and screwed in 1×3″ boards all the way down the studs. This gives space for your wires/cords behind the TV and bonus, it is also an nice way to locate the studs when nailing the pallet boards to the wall. We only placed the 1×3″ boards in the areas where we would need to place the pallet wood.

 

 

 

After the 1×3″ boards were screwed into place in the studs, we began choosing the wood for the wall. We pretty much had to go row by row and find boards that were the same size for each row. We used a brad nailer and nailed the boards directly to the 1×3″ boards since they were all screwed into the studs.  If the boards are not similar in size it will mess up the next row. We only added pallets on the wall space that would be showing and tried to alternate the pattern in each row. We went a few inches beyond the edge of the bookcase so it would not be visible where we stopped the row. We don’t like to reminisce this picture as our Notre Dame Irish got beat that night.

 

When there was an area where there may have been a small gap, we touched up that area on the 1×3″ board with grey stain so that it wouldn’t be as visible through the wood wall.

 

 

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the way it turned out. In the end, this is one of my favorite projects ever…maybe not the labor, but the result is wonderful!!

 

 

 

 

 

In this most recent photo of my wood wall room, I used these command hooks and attached them to the top of the back side of this large canvas that I had enlarged years ago. The space of the command hooks that I used were wide enough to hook right to the top of my television. What a great way to hide the TV.

 

Thanks for stopping by! I hope that this will help with your next project! Hope to see you on IG and Facebook as well! Special thanks to @shadesofblueinteriors for putting her tutorial out there to help with my project. 💗

 

There are affiliate links included in this post to assist you with finding products that we used in our project or home decor that has been displayed. I only link products and companies that I trust.