Homeowner 'went wild with pallets' in room makeover
DIY'ers: Laura Borckardt of Bluffton and handyman Joe Dirthe
Project: Office makeover
After the death of her significant other, Laura Borckardt of Bluffton found closure through a renovation project that turned his old office into an attractive bedroom.
In order to move on after the death of my dear, sweet man in 2013, I knew I had to completely renovate his office. I made the decision to turn the 11-by-11 room into a bedroom. I wanted it to be attractive, accommodating, and have some "bells and whistles."
After a lot of donation pick-ups, measuring, drawing and speculation, I hired handyman Joe Dirthe to do the labor, as I'm not tool-adept. Together we walked through what could and could not happen in the room.
The TV was hung on the wall, so not to take up any floor space. Then we went wild with pallet boards. Joe had access to the pallets and disassembled them down to only the boards. I wanted the nail heads to show, so the nails had to be cut off on the backside. We white-washed the boards and used a nail gun to adhere them to the walls. We put them behind the TV, we created a wall shelf behind a door, and Joe even made a desk with three boards and two kitchen stools.
The bells and whistles came from our final decorating idea: stripes on the wall behind the bed. But these weren't going to be ordinary stripes. We were going to stripe it using Spar Varnish in a satin finish. In other words, every other stripe would be clear, and shiny on the eggshell finish of the wall. It was a scary thing to do, because if it didn't work the way we hoped, the wall would have to be sanded, primed and repainted.
Joe measured, taped and painted every other section with the shiny, clear varnish. Then we waited for it to dry. The unveiling came about an hour later, and it looked fantastic. It was just what we wanted.
I love everything that was done in the room. In fact, I loved the pallet work so much that Joe made a pallet wall for my porch and I've asked him to prepare more boards to make a headboard for the new bedroom.
This story was originally published May 3, 2015 at 12:01 AM with the headline "Homeowner 'went wild with pallets' in room makeover."