Wall decoration with old boards. DIY country furniture ideas
Recycling hardwood, you can save a lot. Take a look around and you can't help but notice recyclable wood. However, be prepared to give up your ego and roll up your sleeves.
To get the right to reuse this valuable material, you will soon have to ask a favor from strangers, rummage in places that can hardly be called clean, and work hard.
Slow down near construction sites
Do not drive past buildings under renovation or demolition. If you do not intervene, most likely the materials will go straight to the construction waste dump. Find the site supervisor or building owner and politely ask permission to take some of the material. The older the building being refurbished or demolished, the more likely you are to come across excellent seasoned wood with a fine texture.
Valuable finds: hardwood floors, wide plinths, massive residential doors, wooden beams administrative buildings.
Avoid: houses built in the last 60-70 years; standardized Construction Materials, which the growth of housing construction required, is of little use for carpentry projects.
Old barn - new life
The gold mine of old barns
Wooden sheds are another promising source of recycled wood.
Valuable finds: classic design with wooden frame with long beams contain a significant amount of straight-grained wood.
Avoid: wood with signs of damage by carpenter beetles or termites; these insects can easily spread throughout your lumber yard and throughout your home.
Bargain with merchants
A few minutes spent scrolling through the Yellow Pages will provide you with contact information for many hardwood companies. From furniture shops and veneer manufacturers to door and boat makers, any shop that cuts boards has waste.
Valuable finds: Red tree; this popular material is still often used today in the manufacture of doors, boats and expensive furniture.
Avoid: companies that use resources efficiently; tiny scraps can only replenish your wastebasket.
Don't ignore old furniture
Discarded furniture can be recognized as one of the most underestimated sources of material for carpentry projects. Although old furniture is not very similar in shape to the boards, this does not mean that it does not have usable wood. Pay close attention to "garage" sales, where real gems are found. When the trade draws to a close, instead of trying on shoes and shirts, ask if you can borrow shelves. Even without finding suitable material, you can purchase cabinets, shelving or shelves with compartments for your workshop. Finally, if your city is undergoing spring cleaning, go hunting early (perhaps even the previous evening) - the prey can be large.
Valuable finds: wood countertops, headboards, broken pianos and pews are real treasures for a carpenter.
Avoid: veneered furniture masquerading as solid wood furniture.
The ubiquitous pallets
You can find pallets for transporting goods at almost any company that has a loading dock. However, before you reap the benefits, you will have to pull out a lot of nails and clean the dirt from the pallets. Therefore, be discerning; do not waste time and effort on ordinary pallets made of pine boards. Instead, look for hardwoods (after getting management approval, of course). The heaviest or most expensive goods are usually shipped on pallets made of thick oak planks.
Valuable finds: companies engaged in international deliveries of oversized cargo; what is considered common cheap wood in one country may be exotic in other countries.
Avoid: pallets from companies supplying pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals; their traces can be hazardous to health.
Reducing the size, open up new possibilities
Are your wood supplies running out? So it's time to downsize your products. Explore the scrap bin and make some miniature projects. They will not only serve a good gift or decorate your home but raise questions from curious friends. When you tell them about the project, be sure to include a story about how the material was obtained. After that, get ready to write down phone numbers, as someone will definitely remember an acquaintance of his friend, whose garage is bursting with unnecessary boards.
Valuable finds: acquaintances promising visits to various outbuildings and rich booty.
Avoid: become the most arboreal miser; set a limit on minimum size scraps and free the workshop from everything that is smaller.
How to work with old wood
Unless luck really smiled at you, the wood you managed to get will require a little more work than purchased lumber. You have to be very careful to avoid metal fasteners and dirt that dull the cutting tool. Concentrate on how much money you have saved, and the time spent on the following six procedures will fly by.
1. Don't Forget the Metal
Metal is enemy number one for cutters and saw blades. Remove any visible nails and screws from the boards. To find hidden metal fasteners, spend some of the money you save on an inexpensive metal detector or an all-in-one detector. Circle the dangerous areas with chalk and avoid them when sawing.
2. A clean board is a happy board
On the list of things that can dull your tools, dirt comes right next to metal. Scrape loose dirt with a stiff plastic or brass bristled brush. Avoid steel brushes, the use of which may result in the need for repeated metal removal.
3. Bring out the texture
The last step before the cutting tool touches the wood is to remove the last layer of dirt or old finishes. This isn't the time to stand on ceremony. Get out your belt sander with 80 grit sanding belt and clean the boards quickly. Move the power tool constantly. Belt sanders remove material very quickly and can create a dent in the surface in an instant.
4. Sacrifice the ends by saving saw blade
Porous end cuts collect dirt like a tabloid press. This is especially true for boards taken from old sheds or dragged along the ground, for example, pallets. Saw off the ends of each board a few centimeters. By doing this, you will not only alleviate the fate of your cutting tool, but also remove small cracks that are always on old boards.
5. Is it possible to process boards now?
Yes. The time has come to cut the wood and get a usable material out of it. But first, remove an expensive and high-quality saw blade and replace it with a cheap or old one that is not a pity to blunt. Make a straight cut along one of the edges of the board using saw machine or circular saw with guide. Turn the board over and file the second edge parallel to the first, removing just enough material to remove any rot or stains. Before processing old boards on planer and thicknesser machines, also install old knives.
6. Highlight the story
When dealing with family furniture, its origin is almost as important as design features. A reused tree adds its own history to the history of the item. Highlight it by showing off. Rough edges, nail holes, worm marks, and faded finishes can all become design elements of the finished product.
Wooden boards in the interior are not a new solution. Attempts to design the interior in one style or another, color and texture underlining wooden details, the decoration of certain fragments of the room with a tree - it was, is and will certainly be.
The purpose of this article is to give design solutions more practical application and consider decorating at home with your own hands.
Aims and means
Before proceeding to the consideration of techniques and techniques, let's define the goal.
And the goals can be:
- Decorating a room or all rooms in the same style.
- "Dressing" individual elements with wood, for example, parquet floors or parquet board on the wall in the interior.
- Selection of certain elements by a tree. These can be skirting boards, certain wall compositions, decoration of fireplaces or false fireplaces with a board.
- Creation decorative elements and or its residues.
Interesting solutions! Blinds from the board, which act as a partition for zoning, with strengthening of fasteners, increasing the gaps between floors, can become light shelving for decorative tinsel. Thus, from simple element room decorations, they turn into a piece of furniture.
Uniform style requires standards
There are several styles that prefer wood in the interior:
- Provence. Style from France. It involves the design of walls, ceilings, not to mention the floors, with wood in bed tones. Also in the interior there are a large number wooden furniture with decoupage elements. Style features - vertically running wall boards, batten rough processing, highlighted beams ceiling. A light parquet board is also an element of the Provence style.
- Country. Remove white and generally bed tones from Provence, and you will get country music. This style is not inherent in decoupage, ceiling beams, flooring- everything is decorated in darker tones, and varnishes and are used accordingly.
There is one more interesting feature style, wall details do not go vertically, but horizontally. Since the country came from overseas, a feature of the construction of houses was frame construction, vertical wall beams are also distinguished by contrasting dark stains. If a crate was present in the design, it is also put on display.
- Folk style. As a rule, Russian, although there may be Norwegian and Finnish. The peculiarities of this direction is the entry into the interior of the elements of the wall masonry of logs or timber with the rest. Small false walls, often in the form of arches, harmoniously fit into the environment. They can also become elements of zoning between the kitchen and the dining room.
- Hunting lodge. As such, the “hunting lodge” interior design direction does not exist, but it is not accidental that it is singled out separately. Recently, much attention has been paid to the use of cheap, including lumber, in the decoration of apartments, houses, and cottages.
The cheap ones include croaker and unedged board. Both types are used for decorating walls. Their prices are corresponding appearance unusual. And although taste is an individual matter, it is better to leave such a decor for a summer residence.
Individual elements
These methods are used quite frequently. A wall of boards in the interior, or part of it, can completely transform the room. Here we give a few tricks that will be useful when decorating walls with planks.
If you want a little practical instruction:
- full “dressing” of the wall with a board is possible in large rooms with high ceilings. This can be done in the hall, living room or in combined loft-style rooms;
- a vertically located board visually increases the ceilings, a horizontally located board - the dimensions of the room in width;
- indoors, the tree is not afraid of temperature changes, high humidity, decay. Therefore, to create a healing effect, it is better to take coniferous boards, subjecting them to minimal treatment with impregnations, and especially varnishes;
- if you want to load wooden wall something more serious than framed photographs or decorative plates, then fixing the boards to the wall must be carried out “without intermediaries” - into the wall with dowels.
Advice! Heavy shelves, hanging brackets for household appliances it is better to fasten not to the board, but to the wall through the board, it is more reliable.
Even smaller inserts
Fireplaces and false fireplaces can be decorated with boards. For individual elements, old boards in the interior are suitable. It is better when they are not gray, but dark or red, although a lot depends on the overall palette of the room.
Interesting to know! Last time fashion trend is the application barn board. Barn - because it was removed from barns - an overseas tradition to turn rubbish into decor, when old buildings that did not have architectural value were dismantled and sold by planks.
Depending on the type of wood, over time, the boards acquired not only an interesting texture, but also color. The designers have taken this into account.
In addition to fireplaces, you can decorate an arch with a board, separate wall panels resembling objects or animals. Whatever your imagination is enough for, you can arrange it. Often the interior board goes to the design of niches, they also form racks for light items.
Boards can be dialed sliding doors between rooms, you can make furniture out of them, or breathe new life into old furniture. As a material, wood is the most grateful and pliable. With the skills of a carver, you can make a simple pattern on a smooth board or decorate a kitchen sideboard.
Finally
In fact, any board can be given both beauty and functionality. Another fashion trend of the new century is graphite board. It can emphasize severity, you can draw on it with chalk and erase, or you can simply write family rules or reminders.
The video in this article will demonstrate the wide possibilities of the tree. And if you still have questions - ask them in the comments, we will be happy to answer them!
