Master Bedroom DIY Feature Wall with Stikwood Weathered Wood

I’m so grateful to all my sponsors for the One Room Challenge. Stikwood provided me with the materials to create this feature wall. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

 

Welcome to week three of the fall One Room Challenge! This week as part of my bedroom makeover I create a feature wall using Stikwood. I have been admiring Stikwood projects on Pinterest for a while now and was so excited to try out their Reclaimed Weathered Wood product.

The Stikwood boards are really easy to work with, they are about ¼” thick real wood and have three strong adhesive strips on the back. My boards looked a little curved when they came out of the box but they install flat against the wall without any issues.

I decided to start at the bottom of the wall and work my way up so my first step was to make sure my baseboards were level (which they were). To apply the first board you simply peel the backing off the adhesive strips, position the board against the baseboard at corner and firmly press it against the wall.

The adhesive is strong so if you don’t get the positioning exactly right you might need to pry it off and try again – I definitely had to do this a few times and one of my boards snapped in the process but it wasn’t a big deal because I had extras to work with.

Once I had completed a row, then I went over the whole thing with my roller and started the next row.

The hardest part of the whole thing was actually finding a rubber roller to apply pressure to the boards. I thought this would have been a hardware store item, but none of my local shops carried them/knew what i was talking about when I tried to describe it. In the end both rollers I bought came from the decoupage section of my local craft store. Yes..both. I had to buy two. Learn from my mistake – the first roller I bought was plastic and all my rolling actually caused the plastic to heat up and melt part of the handle!

I had to switch to a roller that had a more sturdy metal and wood body. Might be worthwhile to get the roller that Stikwood sells, it looks like it’s more robust and would probably be faster than using the little 2” I had.

Covering the wall took less than a day (I had a short break to go buy a new roller and get stuck in a rainstorm) so I finished mine up the next morning. I did have to trim the last board on every row to fit but it was really easy to do with our mitre saw.

There were two parts that were a little fiddly:

The first was the outlet. It worked out for me that the outlet was going to land right in the middle of a board. I marked the placement of the outlet on the back of the board and then used our jig saw to cut out the small rectangle. You’ll notice that a couple of pieces snapped off in the process, I grabbed them to fill in the holes once the board was installed.

I turned off the power (very important – do not skip this step) and pulled the outlet box out from the <<enclosure>> feeding it through the hole I cut in the board. I used a sharp knife to cut little notches at the top and bottom to screw the outlet back into place.

Before reinstalling the outlet cover I put the little pieces that snapped off into place. They are being held on by the cover. This outlet is actually hidden behind our bed so I don’t think this will be an issue. If the pieces didn’t align with the outlet cover I would either cut a new board (which hopefully would not have the same issue) or just use a little adhesive to glue them in place.

The second was the very top of the wall, after working my way up I ended up with a small gap against the ceiling. I ran a few of the boards through my neighbour’s table saw creating strips ranging in size from 5/8” – 1”.

When it came time to install the little strips I also had a small knife handy to shave away small slivers to make everything fit perfectly. The the wall was done!

 

You might notice that there is a lack of brown boards in the lower centre of the wall, I definitely stuck the boards I did not like as much (the almost black and white ones) behind our headboard where they would be hidden. If our bed was not going on this wall I would have spread the colours out more evenly.

 

The wall that I covered is 12’ x 8’ so Stikwood sent me 110 square feet. This was a little more than I needed which was perfect. There is a lot of variety in the patterns and colours of the boards and I had the flexibility to pick my favourite boards.  I do have some leftover boards which I want to find a use for because they are just so nice!

A couple of tips for working with Stikwood:

• Get a good roller that will stand up to all the pressure you’re going to put on it
• Keep your windows open when you’re installing – There is a slight smell to the boards that I didn’t notice until I left the room and came back in – I opened the windows and it was gone quickly.
• Make sure you allow for a little extra when ordering so you can omit boards you might not like the look of as much
• If you’re in Canada, Stikwood ships by UPS and you might have to pay a fee for them to come across the border (mine was about $50)

Chris and I both love how this wall looks, and installing it was very easy. The weathered wood adds so much character to the room and the different shades look great with our wall colour and the new grey fabric on the bed.

It’s also great that our bed is now back against the wall and no longer sitting in the middle of the room! Especially because my next project – our new shelving unit – is going to be assembled in place and I need the floor space! To prepare for that project our mismatched bookcases have been emptied and taken apart and all our books are stacked on the floor in the guest room. You know what that means? This upcoming week will be “Casey makes a big mess week” – we couldn’t have the One Room Challenge without it now could we?

Thanks so much for following along with my bedroom makeover progress! There are so many great projects that are being done as part this challenge – make sure to go and check them all out over on Calling it Home the host of this challenge!