This is a post that the DIY community loved.  It was the first step in a kitchen overall that took a 90’s kitchen with fairly good bones into a place we really enjoy cooking in.  After all these years I still love it.  

This was one of the first projects my husband and I worked on together. This is a small 900 square foot house in Grand Rapids, MI. At the time we were renovating, we thought this would be our forever home. We loved the neighbors and the location, and Grand Rapids in general. So we renovated the entire house. We started here in the kitchen.

This project was simple and easy. The first thing we did was paint the wall so that if we had any gaps, the former red wall would not show through. We used new pallets that we purchased locally and then bleached them in the sun. Before we began, we cut the pallets into 1/2 and 1/3, so we had three sizes to work with. I then stained the boards individually. I used Minwax stain in the following colors. Slate Blue, Walnut, Provincial, Ebony, and some leftover redwood deck stain. When I stain, if I am going for different colors, I will use the stain without shaking it first, then mix up the pigments to get a darker version. That is all the same blue stain on these pieces. Just some had much more pigment.

I laid the boards out on the floor as we started so I could get a feel of the colors before nailing to the wall.. We installed the pallets directly to the wall with a pneumatic nailer.

From there the wall went up pretty quick. We finished from start to finish in a weekend. Not including the drying time for the same.

I applied two coats of poly over the wall to help seal it.

When ended up pulling up the carpet in the hallway (two big dogs) and replaced it with a geometric tile.

View from the living room into the kitchen.

That’s all I have for today.

-Libbie

*Post has been updated 8/17/20