My Blue Pine Accent Wall and Time-lapse Video of the Build

I have been working on my front bedroom in our new house for a little over a week now. Taking down shelves, odd looking crown molding, filling holes in the walls… So many of them by the way, painting and finally, making a vision become a reality with the blue pine accent wall.
This is what the room looked like before starting the makeover.

After getting the paint in order, we covered the current paint on the walls and ceiling with two coats of flat white paint. After letting the base cure overnight, I covered the walls with a shade that is a bluish gray called Dark Storm Cloud that we picked up from Home Depot.

I painted all but one wall, this was not intentional… Or subconsciously it was, I’m not sure. After coating all of the walls in the paint, I sat on the floor to take in my work and an idea hit me. Build an accent wall with Colorado beetle kill pine! At first my wife was a bit apprehensive to the idea. Well I happened to pick up 6 planks of the beetle kill from the hardware store the night before to use on another project and brought it in from the garage to compare to the paint. She told me to go for it and I was off!

The first 6 boards I chose before the idea hit me:

And the other 14 that were diligently chosen based off of the grain pattern.

Now was the time to measure everything out for the wall to make sure that I had everything in order before the build started. My measurements told me that I would need at least 19 boards, so I bought 20, well, because I might screw up one of the boards. I am glad I did pick up 20 because one of them was pretty badly warped.
Hours were spent at Home Depot in search of the perfect grain. Six stores and 2 purchases later, I had all of the lumber that I needed to start my project.
The tools I used to install the accent wall include:
- 20 planks of tongue and groove blue pine
- A box of finishing nails
- Miter saw
- Dead blow hammer
- Claw hammer
- Flathead screwdriver
- A step stool AKA one of the dining room chairs
- A plunge saw to cute out the outlet sockets

The first thing I did was spent nearly 2 hours mapping out where the boards would be seated on the wall. I wanted the most intricate grain in the center of the wall. I set aside 10 of the boards in order and began the process of finding the first 5 boards to start at the floor, then sorted the final 4 for the top.

I also figured it would be fun to set up my GoPro to capture the entire process of installing the accent wall. Check out the 10+ hours of work done in 2 minutes!

The time-lapse was compiled of nearly 6,500 photos taken at 2 second intervals. The time it took the photos in post processing was a 2 day long process. In hindsight, I could have easily exported them in GoPro’s movie software, but I felt that the exposure of the photos was not up to par. The time taken to fix the exposure however was well worth it!

A big thanks to my buddy Anthony, who said he didn’t do much, but he did! He helped me sort through the wood, transport it back to my place and came over the next day for a bit to help me create this vision that I had and made it into a reality. I owe ya a beer buddy!