DIY Accent Wall Makeover in a Morning with Reclaimed Wood from TimberChic

Before having kids, every summer involved a massive room renovation that lasted weeks! Now, we limit the chaos with simpler weekend projects we can start and finish in about a day! This summer, we did an accent wall makeover in a morning with reclaimed wood boards from our partners at TimberChic! It was so easy, and the results are stunning!

This is a sponsored post with TimberChic.

A little about our home: We have an oversize Cape-style house with the stairway up the middle. This creates an accent wall along the stairs facing into the living room, which we had painted red.

In the spring, we updated our paint from a Tuscan-yellow to a cool Gray Owl, making the warm red tones of our accent wall not the best fit. So we wanted to update this wall to create a more modern feel to go with the gray.

Here’s the BEFORE picture:

At first, we were going to remove the “accent” part of the wall and paint it the same as the rest of the living room. But then one day on Instagram, I saw the perfect makeover project material: TimberChic! I was instantly intrigued, and overjoyed when they reached out to collaborate on a blog project!

TimberChic makes a thin, peel and stick, real wood interior design solution. Their wood is reclaimed from a northern Maine lake and river system, where for years leftover wood from lumber and paper milling sank to the bottom and was forgotten. TimberChic is restoring this lake to its original ecosystem, and along the way, reclaiming wood that has lots of usage left. I love that they are doing their own restoration project even as we restore our homes!

To create their boards, TimberChic cuts the wood into 1/8″ thick planks, and applies 3M adhesive strips to the back to allow for DIY wood projects! The professional grade adhesive sticks to many surfaces. TimberChic creates seven different finishes of their reclaimed wood boards. Each finish has variation in coloring, or you could mix and match finishes for a a more dramatic and unique look.

We chose the Freestone color, which is similar to a “barnwood” finish, but with a smooth, wipeable surface. We wanted a really dramatic contrast to the light gray walls. When we got our reclaimed wood boards from TimberChic, I was just in love with the finish. It’s truly gorgeous with all the swirly wood grains, textures and varigations in coloring.

DIY Accent Wall Makeover in a Morning

The TimberChic boards can be cut and manipulated to create a wide variety of creative layouts. You simply order the square footage you need for the space, add end caps or corner boards, and begin! (You’ll also need a miter saw and a j-bar roller). We went very basic with end cap pieces on the sides and TimberChic boards filling the space between top to bottom.

We found TimberChic reclaimed wood planks to be incredibly easy to use. Our wall needed only minimal prep (scraped smooth and wiped with tacky cloth) so it took only a few moments to get the project underway.

We checked our wall for leveling – our wall was extremely level top to bottom with barely an eighth inch difference, which made the project really easy.

After that, it was just a matter of measure, cut, peel, and stick! Always measure twice to ensure fit because you don’t want to end up with a lot of teeny pieces to “fill in” the space.

Also, apply the boards carefully because there is NO going back once that adhesive sticks to the wall! Here are a few in-progress pictures!

And here’s a video showing how easy it is to transition your home from one look to another!

Some tips for applying your TimberChic boards:

Alternate rows of long boards and short boards. We liked to do a few rows of two longer boards, followed by a row of three shorter boards.
Avoid following a strict pattern of boards because that will look a little unnatural. Of course, if you’re going for a more geometric look, that could look good.
Layout a few rows in advance so you can see how the design is all coming together as you go. This also helps you avoid running out of long boards at the end and being forced to use only short boards.
Try flipping boards around to see how various grain patterns look side by side. Also hold them up to the previous row to see how they look together.
Consider where you’ll put furniture and hang pictures. Some of the boards are more interestingly textured than others, so you may want to place those up higher, or at eye level.

Troubleshooting knotholes

Some of the boards have knotholes in them, meaning you’ll see the wall through the hole. To fix this, TimberChic provides a sheet of round stickers to match the color of your boards.

On the one hand, knotholes are really cool and rustic looking. But on the other, sometimes they show up in not-quite-the-right spot! A couple quirks we had with the knotholes and stickers were: some of the knotholes were over the 3M adhesive backing, meaning the sticky part of the adhesive showed through the hole, and would eventually attract dust. The stickers to fill in the background are shiny, smooth, and black, whereas the boards are brown-black and satiny, so behind very large knotholes, the sticker’s color, texture and shine difference is apparent.

However, with any DIY project, you’re going to run into a few snags. Here’s how we handled the knotholes:

We used the boards with the smallest knotholes, which helped avoid the “shiny sticker” issue.
We had more than enough boards for the space, so we had flexibility to avoid using the most holey boards. Some longer boards, we cut out the section without holes to use them as shorter pieces.
When we really wanted to use a particular board with sticky adhesive behind the knothole, we used an Xacto knife to cut out the sticky adhesive and then put a sticker behind the hole.

I think, instead of stickers, TimberChic should use a small bottle of matching matte or satin paint to fill in the holes with a small brush. This would give a more natural look than a sticker. Perhaps this is a side product they can add in the future!

A simple and dramatic DIY accent wall makeover!

Just to re-iterate: TimberChic is REAL wood, folks! The boards retain all the original and natural wood grains and textures. The finish has lovely color variegations that make for a truly one-of-a-kind project. Never in my life would I have thought I could put up a wood wall in our home. But our TimberChic project came together so smoothly (yes, I did let hubby do all the measuring and cutting work, because that is just not my forte!). But I loved putting up the boards with him and masterminding the selection of wood pieces to create our finished project!

All in all, our DIY accent wall makeover in a morning was fun, easy, and dramatically successful! Our new reclaimed wood wall stands out in striking contrast to the cool Gray Owl wall paint. We placed our current bookshelf/hutch in front of the wall again, although I think I’d like to get a smaller dresser or table here to show off more of the wood because it’s so gorgeous!