One of my latest projects was this beautiful wooden wall on my back patio area. I have been bugging my husband, Ryan, for several months now to help me get this up, and here it is! I absolutely love it; it’s exactly how I visioned it to be. I don’t have it all dec’d out the way I want it yet; it’s super new and it’s been raining since we got it up, but you better believe once the weather is nicer, it’s going to be the new hot spot! I can’t wait! I’m thinking maybe a cute little wicker couch up against the wall, or possibly a couple chairs and a little a table, or maybe even an outdoor TV mounted to the new wall. The options seem countless. I do want to get a couple plant hangers/hooks and hang up some more greenery on the wall, this I know for sure. I am also thinking of maybe putting some type of cover over the awning. Of course, I’ll top my look off with a nice outdoor rug and some patio pillows. Now that I have painted you a picture on how I want it to fully look, let’s go into how I built the wall.

Some before pictures.

The area that we are designing this wall for is 8 feet high by 10 feet wide. Based on your measurements, pick the size in width for the pickets that you want to use for your wall. If you are choosing to have gaps in between your pickets, as we did, keep those gaps in mind when buying your wooden pickets. We weren’t sure on how big of a gap we wanted, so we bought less than we needed for trial and error and ended up making another Home Depot run to get the rest of the wood that we needed for our wall. We laid out what we had on the ground in front of the wall to get a visual on how many we may need, taking the gap into consideration. Your area that you’re wanting to build this wall for may differ in size, but for our particular space, like I mentioned earlier, is 8′ high by 10′ wide. The wooden pickets that we used are 1X4X10. Our bottom piece is a bit larger than the rest of our pickets because we wanted our first picket to look more prominent than the other pickets. We used 1X8X10 for the first picket down at the bottom. You will also need a foundation to mount the pickets into, so we used 1X3X8 pickets, we bought three of these. For our gap width that we decided to go with in between pickets, we used wooden paint stir stick. We cut the paint stir stick into several different pieces and stacked the paint sticks two high. Some other items that we purchased were (6) 4 & 1/2 lag bolts, (6) 3/4 washers, & nap weather proof silicone. Items that we used, but already owned were: Nail Gun, all purpose Dremel, Drill, leveler, measuring tape & a Miter Table.

Firstly, we had to make our foundation. I didn’t want my wall flesh to the ground, so we used pickets stacked three high off of the ground as a starting point. With the three pickets laying on the ground, we stood our 1X3X8 pickets flesh up against the wall. As you can tell from the pictures, we have an outlet, a vent, and a drain valve. Your wall may have a couple things protruding out of your wall too, so place your pickets where they can fit, but keep them far/close enough to where they will make a good foundation. We placed one on both the far ends and one close enough to the middle. To secure these into the wall, we used (6) 4 & 1/2 lag bolts. Ryan drilled a hole into the wall using a quarter inch multi purpose drill bit. You will need to use a multi purpose drill bit if you are trying to drill through stucco. He measured these holes 2 feet from the top and 2 feet from the ground (we took the three pickets we left on the ground into consideration, so our 2 feet started from the top of those planks). On the pickets that we used as the foundation, he also drilled a hole in center of the pickets, 2 feet from both ends. By doing this, your holes in your pickets should match up to the holes on your wall. After drilling the holes into your wooden pickets with the same multi purpose quarter inch drill bit, use a quarter inch speed way paddle bit in the same holes. The paddle bits will scrape off enough wood to make the washers that we purchased fit flesh in the wood. You are going to want the washers to fit flesh with the wood so the pickets that we nail into the foundation will all evenly sit flat up against it. Around the holes that Ryan drilled into the wall, he made a circle around them with nap weather proof silicone. The nap weather proof silicone is going to help prevent water from seeping into the holes and causing unseen issues.

Notice in the bottom right picture, Ryan took the pickets that were laying on the ground into consideration when he made his holes into the pickets to match up with the holes that he made into the wall.

Match your holes up and with the nap weather proof silicone in place, stick the picket up against the wall and drill your bolt using the washer into the wall.

After you have your foundation in place, other than the objects that protrude out, it’s fairly easy from this point forward. We first nailed the bottom piece up (1X8X10) with a nail gun. From that point up, we nailed the 1X4X10 pickets up, until we reached the top. In between each picket, we used the wooden paint stir sticks (two stacked high) for our gap. When it came to the valve, the vent and the outlet, we had to make special cuts, this is where the miter saw and all purpose dremel come into play. For the straight cuts around the vent and the outlet, we used the miter saw, these cuts were fairly easy. For the round cuts that were needed around the valve, we used the all purpose dremel, this made round cuts so we could fit the wood snug around the valve.

That’s pretty munch it, I hope I didn’t leave anything out, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out! I will be posting later on, in the near future, any updates!!

Stay Pretty!