Accent walls breathe new life into a space. My husband and I recently installed an AS-IS Brand wood wall in our family room. Being a large space with no particularly interesting features, the wood accent gave the room real character.            

Selecting product

There are three colours available at Co-op from the AS-IS Brand’s Ish collection. Each has a significant amount of variation, which creates a unique, random look to the products. We selected the “White-Ish” colour as it wasn’t too dark and maintained a modern feel.

To determine how much product you need, accurately measure your feature wall. Each box comes with 20 square feet of product. Ensure you purchase a little extra, a minimum of five per cent, in case of mistakes or if you want to reject any of the boards. We only rejected one or two boards because they either had a large knot or they snapped as we were cutting them. Overall, however, we found the quality to be outstanding and the waste was minimal.

Required tools

Prepare the wall

We opened up the drywall and installed a cable chase for ceiling speaker and internet cables. This allows us to add or remove cables but keep them completely hidden.

Our feature wall was already an ideal colour to install the wood over – a neutral hue that complemented the colour of the boards. The only reason you need a complementary colour is you may see through the boards because of a knot, crack or the joint is not completely tight. 

Since the wood product has a quarter-inch thickness, we needed to install box extenders to each of the electrical boxes on the wall to increase the box’s depth and allow the electrical plate to be reinstalled. We marked all of our wall studs with a stud finder to ensure we were nailing into the studs. Hitting the studs secures the product and also helps eliminate any bowing of the boards.  

Ensure the wall is clean and remove the trim if necessary. We decided to set the quarter-inch-thick wood product directly on top of our baseboards as they had a quarter-inch top ledge. 

Prepare the wood

The manufacturer recommends opening the boxes and let the boards sit for seven to 10 days. This acclimatizes the product before installation since it is real, organic wood.

Sort out all your boards according to length, colour and texture. We didn’t do this step at the beginning and found that we quickly used too many “unique” pieces and didn’t space them out enough. If they are sorted, you can strategically space out the boards with greater character.

You can install this product in any direction – horizontal, vertical or diagonal –  you prefer as the wood boards are butted together. We chose a horizontal pattern, but cut some of the five-inch planks in half to create a bit more of an eclectic look. 

Install properly

We installed the boards using construction adhesive as well as two-inch, 16-gauge brad nails, which are not visible in the final look. The boards could vibrate or loosen over time if you only use nails. But if only using glue, it’s more difficult to maintain a level appearance as some boards are bowed. By pressing down on the board from the top with a level, we eliminated the bow and nailed boards into place.

Our first row was installed directly on top of our baseboard. With the following rows, you always need to be looking ahead to stagger joints by at least six inches and plan ahead by deciding the height of the next row, colour and texture variation. Keep your joints as tight as possible and double check your level often. 

When you get to the top you need to make sure that you don’t end up with a very small strip. So make sure to keep measuring the closer you get to the top and plan your row heights wisely.

The process took us two days to complete, however, that was including the cable chase and working around our children’s activity schedules. You can likely complete the project in one day. It is a high-quality, easy-to-use product and the final results are, without question, stunning.