DIY Couple Reveal Simple Tricks To Creating Panelled Wall For Just £29
- Matthew Scoby, 28, and Grace Shannon, 27, wanted to pep up their living room without spending a fortune
- Inspired by Pinterest, the couple panelled a wall for £29
- The couple had been quoted £150 to have it done professionally
If you have a wall that’s looking a little plain, and wondered how you can add some excitement to it without breaking the bank, look no further.
Matthew Scoby, 28, a plant operator, and Grace Shannon, 27, a primary school teacher, were keen to pep up their living room without spending a fortune.
Inspired by Pinterest, the couple, who live in Middlesbrough, panelled an entire wall - and the transformation cost them just £29.
Having been told it would cost them £150 for a tradesmen to do, the couple were chuffed with their moneysaving efforts.
Matthew told money-saving Facebook group DIY On A Budget UK: "This panelling was something we found on Pinterest and we thought it would be perfect to bring character to the room.
"After doing some research we found that the simplest way to measure it out was to work out how large we wanted our gaps to be between each frame first and then decide how many frames we want.
"So for this wall we went with 15cm gaps and we wanted four frames.
"With four frames we were left with three gaps in the middle and one on either side.
"So to work out how wide we needed to cut the frames we had to multiply the size of the gap, 15cm, by the number of gaps, five, and then take that number off the width of the full wall which was 304cm.
"Then all we needed to do was divide what we were left with by four and that gave us the width of each frame to cut which turned out to be 57.25cm each.
"And then we followed the same process for the height of the frames, taking into account the coving and skirting board which hasn't yet been fitted.
"Getting our heads around the maths of planning it out was definitely the hard part but once that was out of the way we simply needed to make our cuts and then stick them on.
"Once we had cut all the pieces I called for my dad to come around to give us a hand holding the panels whilst we fixed them on.
“He came up with the genius idea of cutting a piece of wood exactly as wide as the gaps we wanted and then we could use this piece of wood to both mark frames on the wall first and to also check the gaps are correct as we are fitting it.
"At first we just tried to use some no more nails but it was slowly peeling away as we let go, so we opted to use No More Nails glue whilst also using some spare wardrobe tacks to keep each piece of wood in place whilst the glue was setting.
"After the glue had set we took the tacks out and then added filler where needed and then painted them the wall colour.
“One tip would be that if you don't have a spare bit of wood you can cut to the same size of the gap, you could use something such as a square biscuit tin you have lying around, measure how wide it is and then use that size for your gaps!
“We used 25 metres of picture frame panelling and two tubes of No More Nails glue. The panelling, which is called pine panel moulding, cost £25 from a local timber merchant called Discount DIY and the glue was £4, so it was a total of £29.
"This was something which we first believed only a highly skilled tradesman could accomplish and we were told it would cost around £150 a wall to get someone in to do.
"So after looking at the finished product we couldn't be any more happy that we made the decision to try it ourselves.
"We are now planning on doing the same in the hallway and up the stairs after seeing how easy it was!”
Tom Church, co-founder of LatestDeals.co.uk, comments: “Panelling is a really on-trend look at the moment, and can cost hundreds or even thousands for tradesmen to carry out.
“The good news is that you can do it yourself on a budget!
“As Matthew and Grace have shown, with some research, creativity - and maths skills! - panelling can be a straightforward and affordable way to add a lot of pizzazz to a room.”
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