The barnwood look is so popular right now, it is used in crafts, in home decor in furniture and much more! The only problem is that now that everyone wants it, of course, the price has skyrocketed! Even the people with barns that are falling down want big money for the wood, even if you remove it yourself! However, there is a very easy way to make new wook look gray and weathered like barnwood. You won't believe how easy it is!
A few months ago, I decided that I wanted to make a wood wall in my home. Since the decor in my house is basically farmhouse, I wanted to make the wood of the wall weathered gray. I did a lot of research on the internet on how to make new wood look weathered. Many of the processes were complicated and or expensive. None of them were something I wanted to undertake for the amount of wood that I was going to need for an entire wall.
I started checking out real barn wood, thinking maybe I would just bite the bullet and buy the wood I needed. Hah! Real barnwood on eBay would have been over $500, plus heaven knows how much for shipping. So that was out, and I really did not know what to do. I finally decided to just buy new wood and stain it gray. It was not really what I wanted, but I could not think of anything else to do.
I started checking out real barn wood, thinking maybe I would just bite the bullet and buy the wood I needed. Hah! Real barnwood on eBay would have been over $500, plus heaven knows how much for shipping. So that was out, and I really did not know what to do. I finally decided to just buy new wood and stain it gray. It was not really what I wanted, but I could not think of anything else to do.
I stained a couple pieces of wood and it was too light, so I let it dry and put on another layer of stain. I still did not like the look, so I put another layer and it really was not getting any darker. Since I wanted the pieces to be all different shades of gray (light, medium, dark, etc) I knew that just using the stain was not going to work. I was stumped!
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Then I had a thought! Maybe I could put a darker undercoat on the wood and that would help to give me the different shades that I wanted and then put the stain on top. But what to use for the undercoat? I needed something that would dry quickly, faster than stain, so I decided to try black craft paint. I figured if I watered it down, it would be gray, and I could make it as light or dark as I wanted by adjusting the amount of water I added.
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I put one coat on and I could not believe how nice it looked! I put a bit more black paint in the mix and tried making a darker board. It looked great! The watered down paint gave the wood a whole different look than the stain. It was rougher and less shiny. The grain of the wood was more pronounced and it looked a lot like barnwood! I showed it to my husband and he was really impressed, he said he liked it much better than the wood that was stained. So we decided to use it as is, with no more stain.
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The wall turned out awesome! It looks so good, I can't believe it. The weathered barnwood color turned out to be so easy to attain, just black craft paint and water. Who would have thought it would have been so simple?
So there you have it.......my wood wall!
Have a great week!
Jade :)
Jade :)
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