During the staging process at the house of plaid, I purchased decor pieces somewhat randomly. I knew I wouldn’t be able to figure out how everything would work together until I was finally able to set it up. In the living room and master bedroom, we had a large blank walls desperately calling out for some lovin’. I needed it to be cheap, easy to make, and easy to hang. Enter the ridiculous pile of luan I had in my garage as a result of the luan saga.
I loved doing these projects. They were fast, cheap (free for me!) and made a BIG impact. I had a little too much fun taping and painting 🙂
Master Bedroom Art
Stain – I started by staining the board with Minwax Special Walnut, which I had on hand. Going back, I wished I’d used a lighter stain color, especially since the luan really darkens with the stain, but ah well. When staining, I squeezed a lot of the stain out of my rag, then really rubbed it into the luan. This helped me to keep it more even. Don’t get frustrated if the stain looks a little splotchy when you are done. You will never notice once you have the paint on.
I penciled off the center longwise, then proceeded to randomly tape arrows of varying widths. I used a mix of light and dark blue with Sherwin Williams Dishy Coral and white. Painting the stripes was fast and fun! I needed 2 coats on the colors and a 3rd coat on the white.
Tips on working with the luan – the veneer on luan is very thin and splinters easily. Therefore, be very careful which way you cut. If you are using a circular saw, keep the wrong side down. If you are using a jig saw, keep the wrong side up. This will cause the splintering to occur mostly on the back. Also, when removing tape, don’t pull straight up. Pull the free edge of the tape 180 degrees backward and to the side, then gently pull until you’ve removed the tape from the cut edge. After that it should come up quickly and easily.
Living Room Artwork
Once I had finished the bedroom, I was eager to paint more! I began with 4 24″ x 24″ squares.
I stained the pieces with Minwax Puritan Pine. I then taped off my longest diagonal. The tape is just less than 1 ” in width. On the 45 degree diagonal, it is about 1 3/8″. See the picture below. I then simply made tick marks on each side at 1 3/8″ intervals, never even needing to move my square. I then laid my tape down on diagonals from one tick mark to the coordinating tick on the perpendicular side. This part was surprisingly quick.
I painted each board exactly the same, with the pattern dark blue, gray, white, aqua.
It wasn’t until I had them painted and laid on the floor that I decided to hang them in the x shape. I originally envisioned a diamond shape. You could also do an arrow. I love how the feel totally changes based on which way you hang them.
Hope you enjoyed these! They are budget friendly and so easy to hang with command strips… my favorite!
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