How to: Scrap Wood Wall

Our back stair has been a plague on my existence for far too long. While I've done a few things to improve it, see here, it's just...it's just a hot mess.

Tired of it, I finally did something about it.

Using a laser level, I picked a random spot on the wall above the door and stuck some painters tape on at an angle, sort of a mirror angle to the handrail. From there I filled in with paint on both sides.

The area above the door is the focal point of this tall, narrow space. It's big, blank, and boring. So next was black paint. I love black paint. It's the best.

I picked up four black shelf brackets and a piece of 1x8 then cut random sized shelves and placed them randomly on the wall. This project was all about random, really.

While I did pick up a bit of extra lumber, the majority of this wall came out of my scrap wood collection. With my compressor and brad nail gun, I tacked the pieces to the wall with 1" and 1 1/4" nails.

Don't forget, if you don't have the right tools, home improvement stores rent them or see if your friends or neighbors can loan you some.

Be sure to swing by the blog, Flipping the Flip, and check out the post Back Stair, Continued, for more details about this project and why I do things the way I do.

Using some Mortite, I stuck some of our wedding vases to the shelves. It's a theater trick for making things immobile on shelves and it works wonders. It does stain, leaves an oily residue though, FYI.

Once everything was done, it seemed like something was missing so I painted a thin yellow stripe then a swath of black angled in the other direction.

And voila! I'm super happy with it. And what's cool too is that I can name where every piece of wood came from, what project around the house, so it's like an amalgamation of the whole house and trip down memory lane.