I used to think reclaimed wood was one of those things that only existed in Pinterest fever dreams—you know, the kind of project that looks effortless in photos but actually requires a barn demolition crew and a trust fund.
Turns out, sourcing reclaimed wood isn’t nearly as romantic or as impossible as I’d imagined. You can find it at salvage yards, which smell like must and motor oil and are staffed by guys who’ve seen every half-baked DIY dream walk through their gates. Construction sites sometimes give away old pallets, though you’ll want to check for the HT stamp (heat-treated, not chemically treated—here’s the thing, you don’t want bromide leaching into your bedroom). Old fencing works too, especially if you live somewhere with decades-old cedar or redwood installations that people are tearing down to install vinyl. I’ve pulled boards off a 1950s fence in San Diego that had this silvered patina you absolutely cannot fake, no matter how much grey stain you slap on fresh pine. The wood remembers its weather. It remembers its decades. And yeah, that sounds precious, but wait—maybe it’s just accurate.
Anyway, once you’ve got your haul, the prep work is where most people discover they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. You’ll need to denail everything, which means a crowbar, patience, and accepting that some nails will snap off inside the wood and haunt you later when you’re cutting. Sand down splinters, but not so much that you erase the character—though honestly, defining “character” versus “tetanus risk” is more art than science.
The Horizontal Plank Wall That Everyone Definitely Already Knows About But Still Looks Good
The classic move is horizontal planks, staggered or aligned, usually behind a bed or a couch. You’ll see this in every single boutique hotel from Portland to Asheville, which should probably make it feel overdone, but somehow it still works. Maybe because wood is wood, and our primate brains like it regardless of trends. You’ll want to start from the bottom and work up, using a level that you’ll check obsessively for the first three boards and then abandon entirely by board seven, convincing yourself that “rustic means imperfect.” Use construction adhesive and finishing nails—the adhesive does the actual work, the nails just hold things while it dries. Some people skip the nails entirely and claim the adhesive is enough, and maybe they’re right, but I’ve seen enough sagging planks to remain a skeptic.
The wood won’t be uniform thickness, which is annoying.
You’ll need shims behind thinner pieces to keep everything flush, or you can embrace the unevenness and call it “dimensional interest,” which is what I did in my own bedroom after spending forty minutes trying to make a warped barn beam lie flat. The stagger pattern matters more than you think—random lengths look better than alternating short-long-short-long, which reads as forced. Cut your pieces in a big batch, label them with chalk, then lay them out on the floor before you commit to anything on the wall. I learned this the hard way, which is the only way anyone actually learns anything about home improvement.
The Herringbone Pattern That Will Test Your Marriage or Roommate Situation
If you want to get fancy—or if you enjoy suffering—try a herringbone or chevron pattern. Herringbone has the boards meeting at right angles in a zigzag, while chevron cuts them at matching angles so they form a point, like the old parquet floors in Parisian apartments that cost more than a car. Both require a miter saw, a decent amount of math, and the ability to recieve repeated failures without throwing your tape measure across the room. I’ve watched people attempt this on a weekend and finish it three months later, still missing trim pieces because they ran out of steam and wood simultaneously.
The trick—and I guess it makes sense once you think about it—is to start from the center and work outward, so your pattern stays symmetrical even if your wall isn’t. Mark a centerline, both vertical and horizontal, and use that as your anchor. Each piece needs to be cut at a 45-degree angle, and you’ll need to account for the wood’s varying widths, which means constantly remeasuring. It’s tedious in a way that feels almost meditative until you mess up a cut and waste a beautiful piece of hundred-year-old oak because you were thinking about lunch instead of geometry.
But when it’s done—when the light hits those angles and the grain patterns intersect in ways that feel almost accidental—it’s worth it. Maybe that sounds like justification for lost weekends and sawdust in your hair for a week, but here’s the thing: it actually is worth it. The wall becomes the room. Everything else is just furniture.
