DIY Accent Wall How To Create A Feature Wall In A Bedroom, Nursery

Hey everybody welcome back to my channel. Today I'm going to show you step by step how I made this feature wall for our nursery. So stay tuned and check it out. All right so first thing I needed to do is paint the wall and I figured it would be a lot easier to paint it right now and then touch up the paint later rather than paint the whole wall once the pattern is up. For this I used a brush to cut in the border of the wall and then I used a nine inch paint roller to roll the wall. And while the paint dried I could get started on the wood strips. For this I picked up a sheet of half inch MDF and definitely made sure to wear a face mask while cutting this as this makes a huge mess. I cut a bunch of strips to an inch and a half wide and then painted them using the same color as the wall. And I used a four inch foam roller to get a nice and smooth finish. Now the first coat of paint is going to raise the grain. I know MDF doesn't have grain but it's going to make the MDF rough. So then I came back with 220 grit sandpaper sanded it smooth before applying a second coat. All right so now that the paint has dried on these strips I can go ahead and install them on the wall behind me. What I'm going to use for that is an 18 gauge brad nailer. This is just a battery one by DeWalt. The brand doesn't really matter this is just what I happen to have. And just a quick note if you guys are debating on whether or not to pick up a battery nailer of any kind especially a 18 gauge brad nailer like this. I debated and debated for a long time and I'm so glad I finally purchased this. This is just a game changer. I don't have to haul around a hose a compressor anything like that just to pin some strips of wood on the wall. So again if you guys are debating on whether or not to pick one of these up highly recommend. And if you guys want this exact one I'll leave a link to this down below. All right so this is going to be pretty straightforward just put this piece up against the wall where you want it and shoot a couple brad nails in there. Now to start I'm just going to do the top and the bottom and the two sides kind of give me a nice border around the whole thing and then I can start laying out my pattern. And just start in the corner and work away from it. Like I said just start in the corner and work away from it that way you know you have the end of the strip butted into the corner nice and tight. All right then I can just cut a strip to size to fill this remaining gap. So you'll probably notice that there are some thin gaps between these boards and the ceiling and that's totally fine. We'll come back later and fill those in. Same thing with the nail heads and the joints where two pieces come together. Do your best to close those gaps as much as possible but also be aware that you're going to have some. All right so now that we've got the strips along the border installed now it's time to start laying out where our vertical dividers are going to be. In my case I want four equal spaces so that means I need three vertical strips. So I can go ahead and measure the inside to inside of the strips along the bottom. All right so in my case it's 119 inches across so 119 divided by 4 is 29.75. So I'm going to make a mark every 29.75 inches and that's going to give me the center marks for my vertical strips. All right so now I've got my mark laid out right here and like I said that's going to be the center of my vertical pieces. So I'm just using the scrap as an example but this is an inch and a half wide so half of that's three quarters of an inch. So now I'm just going to measure over three quarters of an inch from my center mark. Make a mark right there. So now instead of trying to line it up with the center I've offset it half the width of my vertical and then I can just line that up right on the edge. So I can do that on the bottom one and then the same thing on the top mark and then it should be really easy to line that up. You may also want to use a level if you have one handy and just put the level on the side of the vertical before you nail it in. Just making sure everything is as straight and plumb and level as possible. And here's a tip if you see that some of your boards are loose they're not tied up against the wall instead of driving a nail straight in put it in at a little bit of an angle. That's going to make it more difficult for this board to loosen up and come away from the wall over time. If you want put two in put one in at this angle and then another one the opposite way. That way I can't even pull it off the wall right now. All right so now it's time to start laying out the pattern. So I know that I want to start up here and come down at an angle like this and then the same thing over on this side. Start up here come down at angles like that. I also know that from the bottom of this board to the top of this board is 90 inches. So if I want five equally spaced out angled spaces I need four boards. So I'm going to divide that 90 inches by four giving me 22 and a half inches. So I just need to mark out these vertical boards every 22 and a half inches. And one more thing I'm going to mark that 22 and a half inches on all of the vertical boards. All that one and that one plus these three in the middle. Another thing to note on the three in the middle mark out the 22 and a half inches on this side of it as well as on this side of it. Because you're going to have the two boards coming in like this. So you're going to want to line those up right on those marks on each side. Just make it as clean as possible. All right let's do it. All right so what I'm doing is I'm actually just putting the tape measure right on the ground and then bringing it up here. And then I'm going to mark my first mark 22 and a half inches. And then I'm actually going to bring the end of the tape measure down to that mark. So I can line it up right on there. And then I can just keep on marking out the 22 and a half inches. Makes it dummy proof for a guy like me. All right so I went ahead and I found the angle that I need for this first piece. And now I've just started this next piece with that same angle. And I can line it up on this mark right here. And I can bring it down to my next mark on this side. And I can just mark top and bottom. And I flip that over draw that line and make that same cut. And just some advice for these angle pieces. Take your time to measure and cut out each one individually. That way you're going to get a really tight fit for each one. And there will be less gaps to fill later on. Once you find these angles and the length of one. I know you're going to be tempted to cut out a handful of them. But trust me on this. Just go one at a time. You'll end up with a much nicer result. All right and then to fill in the nail holes. I'm going to use some of this wood filler. Just going to put a little bit on my finger. Fill in the nail hole. Let it dry. And then sand it smooth. I'll admit this step seems like you're taking a step backwards. Since you're putting all these little dots on your nicely painted wall. But filling the nail holes and the joints between the pieces will really make this wall look professional. To sand it smooth. I picked up one of these sanding sponges. And used a vacuum to contain as much dust as possible. If you have a random orbit sander. You could probably use that instead of the sanding sponge. But I just wanted to try to contain as much dust as possible. After everything was smooth. I vacuumed the entire wall. All right so we got our trim sealant. We got some paper towel. And then we've got this cake tool right here. If your fingers are small enough. Probably don't need that. And what we're going to do now. Is we're going to take this trim sealant. And we're going to go around each joint. Where the wood meets the wall. And we're just going to seal that up. We're going to follow through with our finger. Smooth it out nice and smooth. And it's just going to look seamless in the end. So let me show you. And you don't need to put a huge bead of sealant in each joint. A small amount will do. Since your finger will push the perfect amount of sealant into the joint. And any excess will be wiped away on the paper towel. Again it might seem like you're taking a step backwards here. But I promise you. This step will take this wall from professional to elite. And the only thing left to do. Is touch up the paint. Now I could end this project right here. And have a really awesome accent wall. But we wanted to make this room special. And unique for our first child. By adding his name to the wall. I used my cnc machine to cut out some letters from some quarter inch mdf. And then painted them gray. Then I stuck them to the wall using ca glue. And some spacers where needed. I glued and brad nailed the spacers to the wall. And then painted them blue to match the wall. And hopefully help them disappear a bit. Then using ca glue. I could stick the letters to the wall. I just took my time here. And used some blue tape to keep the letters on a level line across. And all that's left to do. Is dot the i. And wait for the little guy to arrive. If you guys enjoyed this video. It'd be awesome if you could hit that like button down below. That just lets youtube know that this was a decent video. And that maybe it should share it with some other people to watch. And if you haven't already. Consider hitting that subscribe button down below as well. Only if I've earned it. That way you're notified every time I release a video. And until next time. Thanks for watching.