Pinterest is oh so fabulous and my go to for creative solutions and projects, but if we never bring our ideas to life, where does the inspiration go?  Let’s GIT UNPINNED and follow through on those boards we excitedly pinned and then forgot about!

Before

After

Scrolling through pinterest and watching Fixer Upper makes you really want to wood plank something. Am I right?  Well, as I lounged in my living room over the years I got to thinking about adding wood scraps to our fire place wall.  On our way to church one Sunday, we passed by a distant neighbor who was replacing their privacy fence and saw a big pile of old wood scraps on the curb.  I told Joe my idea and I think he was more excited about it than me :) We talked about it on the way there and then on the way home decided to stop if it was still out on the curb. Sure enough, the guy was so nice and said we could take it all.  They had even used quite a bit of it already to plank a wall in their new nursery. Aww.

Since it happened to be a free Sunday we decided to get to work right then and there.  We layed all the pieces out and Joe took any existing nails out with some plyers while I put the babies down for naps.  While he ran to Home Depot to get a laser level (which we didn’t use) I roughly, and I mean very sloppily, stained and painted several of the pieces.  We used the color of our walls in the living room (Wild Honey by Behr), white, dark stain, gel stain, and then left several pieces the weathered gray they already were, and then very few pieces were the cedar color.

Joe mapped out an idea of how we wanted to attach everything on the wall so that we didn’t get stuck using the same colors side by side.  We started from the top an worked our way down. Note: We did not remove the molding because we weren’t sure if we were going to like the final product and we didn’t want to replace the molding throughout our entire living room, so we left it as is and it’s hardly noticeable.

Joe made the 45 degree cuts on his miter saw and then we used a nail gun  to attach the pieces to the studs.  Joe also used a bit of construction adhesive on the backside of each piece, but we don’t think that is absolutely necessary. The hardest part was alternating the seams so we didn’t have the same one over and over or two colors matching side by side.

Due to a couple of distractions, Madeleine cough Joseph cough, we got halfway to the mantel by the first day, top of the mantel by the second, and finished the sides on the third. The finished project looks great!!  It definitely makes the room feel taller and brings your eye up, but it does make the room feel a bit smaller, maybe cozier is a better word.  I’m now on the hunt for a circle mirror to go above the mantel so send me your ideas. If you’ve planked scrap wood somewhere in your house, send me your pics and tips too! letsgitorganized@gmail.com