The story for most DIY’ers starts out of necessity. Maybe you wanted a new tv console so you decided to try and make one. Or maybe you needed to get some plumbing or electrical work done and was quoted an astronomical price and decided…hey, why not just give it a try myself. So with each new project we conduct hours of research and then dive headfirst into completing it…well 95 % of it usually. 😂😂
No matter what the project one thing is usually true, we are trying something new and with newness comes moments of doubt. I will speak for myself, but feel free to like this post if you agree, but sometimes I feel inadequate AF. This one room challenge has some tasks I’ve done before like painting and building a dresser, but there are ways that I am pushing myself. I've never put up faux brick panels and let me tell you…I was dreading it.
What if I cut off too much? What if my bricks don’t line up? What if the adhesive doesn’t work? Oh Lord, I have to cut out a hole for the socket, how do I even do that? I feel like in preparation for this room I researched so much that I had information overload. It was overwhelming and quite frankly intimidating. This led to me not meeting my week three deadline. While I still checked off things on my to do list, my biggest goal for the week wasn’t met.
So during week 4 I finally put on my big girl britches and started putting up a wall and guess what…I DID IT! Below are the tools I used and the steps I took! It’s not finished but it’s up and for me that’s a big victory over self doubt! Check out how I did it and the tools I used below.
Tools & Materials:
Nails
Mallet
Dry and Wet rag and/or wipes
9” caulking gun
Putty knife
Sander (block)
Color match paint ( 2 brick colors and one grout)
Sponge
Vacuum
My wall was just over 10 feet wide so I needed about three and a half sheets of the brick wall panels. I chose Home Depot brick panels over Lowes because I liked the colors on theirs better. I placed the panels in my daughter's room so they could get adjusted to the room temperature. It only needed about 24-48 hours but because I just wasn’t ready to put these walls up it was in there for over a week. 🤦🏾♀️
Now, my workshop is in my garage and her bedroom is on the second floor so once those panels got upstairs I wasn’t bringing them back down for cuts. So I decided to bring up all my tools that I needed to cut everything and put them up.
To avoid removing the baseboards I cut off about 3 inches off the panel before adhering to the wall. I 10 out of 10 recommend having a vacuum on hand because there was a lot of debris that came off and it was all over the carpet, walls & panel. So I used a dry rag to wipe off the panel and wall before applying the liquid nails. I applied it about 1 ½ inches inward from the edge, to avoid squeeze out, and then all over the board in a checkered zigzag pattern. I then placed it on the wall from the bottom up. Once up, use the mallet to ensure adhesion.
I then used the nail gun, first around the edges and then throughout the panel. I nailed in an x pattern by crossing two nails. This was just to give more security into the sheet rock. Nailing the edges helped close any gaps and made lining up the other panels more seamless. I have not put my screws into the studs but will be adding 2 to each stud for each panel.
Next it was time for the part that I dreaded the most putting up the second panel. This is where I had the most doubt! It’s easy to put up one panel, but now to match up the second panel to the first one, so the bricks line up, there’s so many things that can go wrong. There are several ways to put these boards together as I’ve seen many folks cut out the half bricks and blend the panels that way. While some like that better for me it felt like I was doing more work and I would still have to putty the gaps and I will still have to color match the gaps. Personally, I’d rather color match a straight seam then color match zigzags seem.
With the second panel I also had to cut out a rectangle for my electrical outlet. I’ve seen it done many ways and I chose to use the toothpaste method. First I cut off the ends of the panel so the bricks line up to the first panel. Then I put toothpaste on the four corners of the panel and pressed the panel up against the wall and outlet. Then I took it down, traced a rectangle, drilled a hole for my jigsaw to fit and cut out the rectangle. One mistake I made is I should’ve unscrewed the outlet and pushed it through the rectangle in the panel before adhering the panel to the wall. Unfortunately, I didn’t think about that until after so I had to kind of wiggle it a little bit to get it out in front of the panel. This was necessary in order to place the outlet cover back on top.
Once I did the second panel, I’m not gonna hold y’all, the third one was easy Peezy, lemon squeezy. So why the heck I was doubting myself so much and didn’t just get this done a long time ago?!?!! I only needed about 27 inches for the third panel, but I wanted to make sure that the top, bottom and all in between was the same distance and they were. I used my Sheetrock T square to measure 27 inches in and then my circular saw to guy down the board. I did a third dry fit, cut any excess, dry fit again, apply liquid nails and then adhered it to the wall.
So this is what it looks like now. Next goal is to use joint compound to fill the seams. Then sand it down so there is distinction between the brick and grout divots. Then I will use the color match and sponge to go over the compound. This is going to help to create the brick texture that the joint compound doesn't have.
To see how week 4 is going for us all click the logo below to head on over and look for yourself. So glad to not be in this alone.
Check out my ORC highlights on Instagram or posts on TikTok for my daughter’s reaction to her new room color. She came straight from work and was in for a pleasant surprise.
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