#007 / DIY BLOG: MDF Panelling - Nursery feature wall
With a newborn baby comes many challenges, many things are new, for both you and the baby. This exciting time is filled with sleepless nights, AM nappy changes, lots of stress, lots of love, endless cuddles, endless crying and above all for first time parents uncertainty. ‘Is he meant to do that?’ ‘Should this go on top of that?’ ‘Is he still asleep?’ ‘Is he hungry, tired or constipated?’.
But if there is one thing that is certain in this period full of uncertainty, is that you definitely want your little lump of gold to have a nice nursery to grow up in. For us, this was easier said than done. Having undergone a full house renovation (still not finished), literally weeks before babys arrival, final decoration and finishing touches in the nursery were not at the top of our agenda. We finally agreed on a design and we went to work. In this article we will cover how we easily and cheaply transformed our nursery back wall from a white blank canvas, to an exciting vibrant feature full of texture and colour.
But if there is one thing that is certain in this period full of uncertainty, is that you definitely want your little lump of gold to have a nice nursery to grow up in. For us, this was easier said than done. Having undergone a full house renovation (still not finished), literally weeks before babys arrival, final decoration and finishing touches in the nursery were not at the top of our agenda. We finally agreed on a design and we went to work. In this article we will cover how we easily and cheaply transformed our nursery back wall from a white blank canvas, to an exciting vibrant feature full of texture and colour.
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+ THE DESIGNRunning our own architecture business, the interior design of our own home, is something we love to do. Emma creates most of her interiors starting with moodboards and then progressing into image collages and visualisations, before progressing into actual drawings. This design utilises a strong graphic wallpaper from Murials Wallpaper (www.murialswallpaper.com) combined with light floating shelves and colourful MDF panelling.
+ THE WOOD PANELLING The MDF panelling was a straight forward repetitive process. 12mm MDF (1220x2440) sheet purchased at the local building merchants and cut in 20x1000mm strips on our work bench at home with a circular saw, a straight edge and two clamps. – Ensure very good ventilation when cutting MDF, as the small particles get everywhere. And of course use appropriate dust suppression and dust masks.
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+ MOUNTING METHODOLOGY AND PROCESS
So finally getting to the fun stuff (my bit). Mounting the strips methodically on the wall. The wall had plastered and painted with standard white emulsion paint, so no trickery here. For mounting the thin strips, I used a mix of general adhesive and small panel nails (1.6mx30mm). I created a spacer piece from a 18mm MDF scrap I had lying around, to ensure the gaps were consistent along the length of the wall. Start by finding the centre of the wall and measure your distance. Then you can divide the size of your strips and gap with the length and see how many strips you will have. I our case we ended up with 48 strips along the 1800mm wall. And luckily the spacings worked our great at both ends and around the sockets as you’ll see later. Once you had established the centre line, ensured you start level, it is just a matter of ‘rinse and repeat’ until you’ve covered the area you want to cover. This wall took me two evenings and a Saturday morning to complete (including baby interruptions).The setting out worked perfectly around the sockets and we tried to match the gap consistently around the sockets to make sure they didn’t look too intrusive. So I cut 5 strips a shorter length to achieve this. We finished off the top by using another scrap piece of wood from our stair slat project which had the right proportions. (25x50mm)
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+ PAINTING / DECORATINGSo this part of the project is Emma’s forte. She started by filling in the pin holes from the nails, caulked around all the strips to ensure no gaps or shadows were visible. Once the strips where sanded down after filling, Emma primed the MDF with a suitable wood primer before applying the final paint. The paint had been mixed in our local B&Q using a swatch from our wallpaper from www.murialswallpaper.com. The green paint took two coats to give a good coverage and the end result is great! The wallpaper came from www.murialswallpaper.com and was chosen by Emma to give a bit of a jungle/forest vibe to the nursery. It will be finished off with a grey baby cot when he gets a bit older. For mounting the wallpaper, Emma used a standard wallpaper adhesive paste bought at our local buildings merchant and a layer was applied to the paper and to the wall. The seams and edges of the wallpaper takes a bit of patience and fiddling. It can be worth investing in new knife blades or a paper scalpel to ensure clean and straight cuts.
Have a look at our Instagram profile for a great time lapse video of the installation process. @pedersensmith www.instagram.com |
Last updated: 18/09/2020
