Stikwood Feature Wall

A reminder: I’m participating in the ‘One Room Challenge’ (ORC), hosted by Linda from Calling It Home, that challenges home and design bloggers to make over a room in their house from start to finish in 6 weeks. We have decided to tackle our living room. Here’s what you missed: The Before and Vision , The Design Plans, and Tile and Personalization

I’ve been dreaming of a white wood feature wall for about a year, and it’s finally here!

With only  the weekend left  to meet the One Room Challenge Deadline, it’s safe to say I cut it as close as one possibly could. So, with all my free time today amid decorating (ha!) I thought I’d sneak in an additional post just on our feature wall progress.

As I’d mentioned in earlier posts, my husband and I had been eyeing Stikwood for a long time, so I wanted to share our start-to-finish experience with other people who are curious about this product.

If you’re not familiar, Stikwood offers wood decor solution in a huge selection of styles and colors. What makes it so intriguing is that it’s all real, reclaimed wood with a self-stick mount that makes it easier to have your own wood wall installation.

A few weeks ago I ordered wood  samples to make sure I picked the right style. After selecting the Hamptons style, their most white-washed option, 100 square feet arrived in three surprisingly small boxes, along with a roller to apply it.

The instructions said to wait 3 days to let the wood acclimate to the temperature in your home. Since I’d experienced the sad effects of not heeding this type of advice in the past, we waited.

I went through the boxes picking my favorite pieces, and began laying them out to make sure those would make it onto the center of the wall. Since this is real wood, each piece is completely different with varying wood texture and nail holes.

Yesterday morning we started installing. And by “we,” I mean my husband. We had ordered *just* enough wood, so there was no way I had any business at the saw.

Applying the wood was the easy part. We first made sure our wall was level where it met the ceiling, and then for the first row began piecing the wood from the middle, moving outward to the edges. We simply wiped down our walls to make sure they were free of dust and residue, pulled the backing off of the wood, and applied it to the walls.

Since we picked a wall with two windows, a fireplace, and way too many outlets, there was a lot of cutting to do!

He spent most of the day on the wall, with a few time outs when the girls got ready for dance photos and wanted to show off for their daddy. 

Many of you know I was nervous to take on such a big project and lamented about whether to cover the whole wall or just the mantle part of it, but I am so glad we did, and that my husband was game for installing it.

The room is so bright and airy now, and the best part of all is that my husband loves it as much as I do!

Don’t judge based on these photos, though. The best is yet to come! I can’t wait to show you what it looks like when everything is pulled together!

Next steps are  caulking around some of the edges. Oh, and of course – finishing the whole room to meet our deadline!

We’re both very happy with the end result and can’t wait to share the very final reveal of the living room makeover, very soon!

Just for fun, check out this time lapse video of my husband installing part of the wall. 🙂

A huge thank you to Stikwood for making my dream feature wall possible! All opinions are my own.