Stenciled Barnwood Tutorial

Last week I shared my spring mantel, and today I wanted to share a tutorial on how I made the stenciled barnwood. It is actually a pretty simple project. There are also a lot of variations that could be made to customize it as well.

The wood that I used was 1 x 8 6ft shiplap boards ($4.57 each at Home Depot). I chose them because they groove together (like hardwood flooring tongue and groove) and because there was a rough side and a smooth side.

I purchased 3 boards and cut them each in half leaving 6 - 36” boards.

Leaving one board unused, I connected the tongue and groove sides to create a grid that measures at 36” x 34.5”.

For the crossbars, I used 1x2-6 No. 2 Premium Pine boards also from Home Depot. I purchased one at $2.47. They were cut to fall just inside the edges so we cut two boards at 34”.

We ran the crossbars at the top and bottom, about 6 inches from the edge. We drilled pilot holes and attached it with wood screws. Just to be sure it was secure, we inserted two screws on each board for both the top and bottom. We decided to attach the crossbars to the smooth side because I wanted to use the rough texture for this project. I left the backside untreated and will now be able to use this for a future project.

Staining the rough side, the first coat was applied with steel wool and I used Minwax Antique Walnut.

The second coat of stain was used to highlight more of the rough textures with a darker color. For this step I used Minwax Dark Walnut.

This is the part where I admit I am a bad blogger (insert hand slapping here). I did all the steps while we had a glimpse of warm weather and then it went cold again and I was unable to do the painting step for some time. When I finally did complete it, I was so ecstatic to be painting, I forgot to take a picture! But no worries, the fabulous folks over at Cutting Edge Stencils where I purchased the stencil have better photos than I would have had anyway.

I used their Charlotte stencil and it was love at first sight! Even looking at this picture of all its lacey wonderfulness make me fall in love all over again!

I met these folks at a blogger event a few months ago and I was so smitten with their products and their company that I knew I wanted to find a project to use the Charlotte stencil. Now, I will admit, it is a little pricey for just this project – but I have a few other projects in mind that easily helped justify the price.

I used the same method, rolling on white paint we had here at the house. Using the overlap method it is quite easy to do. In this case, I hung the stencil of the edge, however, if you were doing a full wall or larger treatment, they have an “edge” stencil that comes with it that fills it all in perfectly. It is quite ingenious and all explained well in their directions and on their site.

My version is a little more “wonky” and not so delicate. This is because I used a rough surface and because I probably used a little too much paint. I did go back and kick back some of it with steel wool. It was also good practice before I work on my next project.