reclaimed barn wood art 2

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When you’re a woodworker, as amateur as you may be, you often have piles of boards and scraps laying around. (Actually this pic was taken to show my messy shop, I’ve thrown them all into a box since, haha) When you look at those scraps, you tend to have days where you want to play around and make some art. At least, I do.

I’ve always been slightly artistic, not sure there’s any real talent there, but I pretend anyway. Today I picked up some of these reclaimed barn wood scraps, starting putting them next to each other, rearranging until I liked the look, and decided that it would make a pretty cool piece of art.

Find your reclaimed barn wood and make a plan:

I cut a piece of 1/4″ plywood out, just more scrap that I had on hand, making sure that it wasn’t bigger than the pieces I was going to put together.

Next, I laid out the pieces on top of the plywood, some were quite long and could be cut down and used in more than one spot, and others were barely too long. At this point I just laid them out where they looked good, knowing that I wanted a asymmetrical chevron pattern. Once that was done, I took the pieces off and drew a straight line on the plywood. This was where the two sides would meet, and it helped me to align the pieces so they made a perfect 45 degree angle, which is important if you want the whole thing to look right. I marked the lines on the pieces that I needed to cut in order to make it rectangular.

Cut and paint the reclaimed barn Wood:

I then took each piece of the reclaimed barn wood to my saw and cut off the excess.

The next step is to align everything, make sure you got your cuts right. If you’re going to paint some of them, I recommend doing that now. I actually just used acrylic paints and watered them down slightly. It makes the paint thin enough that it sort of seeps into the wood, almost like a stain, and you can still see the grain and saw marks just fine. Oh that grain! And those saw marks. I just love.

Glue the reclaimed barn wood:

Finally, start gluing. I literally just lifted each piece carefully, smothered wood glue beneath it, and placed it back down. When I was done gluing, I piled cans of stain, tools (cuz that bottle of glue is so heavy, right? haha) and books on top of it to weigh it down, fancy right? For some of the shorter pieces that drop below, I added a little shim or piece of wood that would allow the pressure from the books to also hold those down. They can’t help it if they’re short! 😉

All finished:

A few hours later, and it is strong and sturdy. So naturally, you take them outside to your front porch where it’s 12 whole degrees Fahrenheit and you snap a few photos. Up or down? I like them both.

Basically, the process is easy, but the decisions on how to place everything and what to paint where are a little more time consuming. Or maybe that’s just me and my indecisiveness. 😉

Give it a try! Share pics of you do!

I made other wall art from reclaimed wood here…Reclaimed Wall Art