Day 2: Project Wood Wall Art

Lessons learned from day 1:

When dealing with anything you found outside, in the elements with limited information on its past use: wear protective clothing! This is probably a good lesson taught in every middle school shop class for all craftsman projects, but one I learned the hard way. I had an allergic reaction to something on the wood panels which resulted in a burning sensation through the evening- "yay for old wood found salvaged from the outdoors!".  In the future I will, and I recommend, long sleeved shirts and pants.

Day 1 1/2 and 2:

I bumped the hardware store visit to Day 2...

Purchased materials:
*3/4" wood nails
*Wood Glue
*Hanging System (will explain when its time to hang)
*1/4" thick hardwood board to mount all panel boards onto
(Total Cost: $37.00)

Tools:
*Hammer
*Sandpaper block
*Metal snips

After clearing a work zone in the apartment we were set to begin! Laying the boards out first we started to see two issues:

1. Not all boards matched up nice and neat (warped woods, angled cuts, completely different colors....)

2. We are about a panel and a half of boards short of what we need (this was anticipated)

After playing around with different partners we opted to accept the imperfect look, after all that's why we choose to use old wood panels! We also decided to discard some that were too mismatched.  While we want it to look rugged, we don't want it to look messy. I'm going to try a finishing technique later on to even out the color of some partnered boards.

Some light sanding to each board, front and back, helped clean them up and freed loose pieces which could result in splinters when handling.  

Each piece received a ribbon of wood glue on the board side before nails.  We tried to stay within the same old nail holes to eliminate the need for additional holes or a poorly crafted appearance. Mistakes made during this part: Wrong size nails purchased (grrr!). Luckily we had some 1” nails at home that did the trick.

The nailing of boards took all of 30 minutes which made it that much more disheartening that we did not have enough to finish.

After nailing the next issue was trimming the excess from the back.  This took a pair of metal snips.  While safety goggles probably should be worn during all times this is a part where I cannot emphasize their importance enough.  The ends of the nails fly wildly when snipped.  The “ping-ping-ping” of them bouncing throughout our apartment resulted in an on-hands-and-knees search for metal tips during clean up! For the tips that were too difficult to snip we hammered sideways and will be covering with duct tape to prevent any scrapes to the wall when hung.

At the end of Day 2 we are half way complete.  I’m hoping to finish by the end of this weekend!

Day 2 Results