Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Design Wall Up

I finally have a design wall in my studio. I bought 2 insulation boards. Each was 8 feet by 4 feet. My wall is 8 feet by about 7 feet and has one electrical outlet on it. Here are the steps I followed:
1.) I measured and cut the boards with an exacto knife.
2.) I cut out the rectangle for where the electrical outlet will be.
3.) I want white felt on one side and want to flip the whole thing over to have black felt on the other side so I cut out another rectangle for where the electrical outlet will be when it is flipped over.
4.) I have a lot of black velcro that was given to me. I cut 8 feet of it lengthwise and glued it onto the edges of one side of each board.
5.) I connected the boards with the velcro.
6.) I sewed the white felt to size.
7.) I laid the white felt on top and realized the black velcro showed through. AUUGH!
8.) I painted the black velcro with white acrylic paint.
9.) I laid the white felt on top and it still showed through.
10.) I put silver duct tape on top of the seam. (The coating on the insulation board is silver, too.)
11.) I laid the white felt on top and the duct tape showed through. DOUBLE AUUGH!
12.) I put a white sheet on top and then the white felt on top of that and all is good.
13.) I brushed a coating of wood glue on the edges of the insulation board as I went around it and pressed the felt onto it and pinned the felt and sheet onto the edges. (The sheet only got pinned to the top edge of the design board; not to the sides or bottom.)
14.) I set the sheet up so that it didn't come as low as the electrical outlets so that I could cut out the hole from the felt and not have to cut a hole from the sheet, too.
15.) I cut out the holes for the outlets from the felt leaving enough extra felt to fold over the edges.
16.) I glued the extra edges of the felt over the edges to finish off the outlet openings and pinned them.
17.) When I put the design wall in place, I realized it had a tendency to fall forward, so I hammered some hardware into the wood wall and pressed hooks into the design wall to hold it in place.
18.) When I'm doing regular work in the studio, I'll run a string from hook to hook to keep the design wall from falling. When I'm doing photography, I'll remove the string.
(I haven't put the black felt on the reverse side yet.)
Design wall with works in progress

edge of design wall with hardware and hooks




Design wall with holes for electrical outlet

1 comment:

  1. I desperately need to get a design wall up! Haven't made time to do one since I moved the studio upstairs. Yours looks wonderful! I wanted to thank you for commenting on my blog but you are a no reply-comment blogger. :( Glad I took the time to look at your blog though!

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