When young couples start their new life together, they normally rent out an apartment or condo until they can afford their own house. But Gena and Vita aren’t like most couples, at least when it comes to renting out space. Instead of leaving themselves at the mercy of some landlord, they decided to make their dream home with their own hands.
Building the entire house took a grand total of five years. You can find the complete documentation video here, but I would like to focus on how they created the walls for their living room:
The title of the video is misleading – the wall decoration project can be viewed in 10 minutes, but the creative process took days of work. During this time, Gena and Vita have cut, split, and aged various pieces of scrap oak wood to make awesome wall decorations to line their presently dull interior wall.
Shaping the Wood
Using a table saw, they cut the scrap wood into different workable dimensions. To show just how much they like to make things themselves, they repurpose an old piece of wood into a wood pusher and fix their broken axe with screws and washers.
While the wood pieces can have various lengths, the width has to have some uniformity to it so they can be attached properly onto the wall. To give each piece some individuality, they split them apart using a hand axe after cutting them with the table saw.
Ageing for Color
They even got their kids to chip in! By dunking the pieces into a simple mix of water and baking soda, you can give the wood a darker color and bring out its cracks and crevices. They leave the wood to dry in the sun to help with the ageing process before gathering them all up for posting.
Hot Glue on Wall
With glue gun in hand, Gena and Vita start hot gluing their aged oak wood pieces to their blank living room wall. I personally don’t think hot glue is the best adhesive to use for interior design as it may end up melting away during hot summer days, but the glue seems to be holding up pretty well for the moment.
To combat the various wall sockets, they use square-shaped recesses so they can easily glue around them. As for those pesky cables sticking out of the wall, a simple drill job allows for a cable to fit into a wood piece without disrupting the overall flow of the wooden wall.
After many, many hours of work and just as many hot glue sticks later, the wall is finally done. To help bring out the wooden interior, they grab a couple of pine branches and pine cones from a nearby tree and fit them into a small pot. Add some Christmas lights, dim the living room, and you have yourself one cozy resting spot.
Gena and Vita’s home is far from done, but the sections they have completed look to rival any commercial home on the market. You can follow their journey as they make their dream home by checking out their channel, CREATIVE GALAXY.
