Farmhouse Gridwall
You’ve probably seen them all over Pinterest. The classic gridwall memo boards. And if you buy one already made, they can be pretty pricey. I’m going to show you how I made my 5′ x almost 3 1/2′ framed farmhouse gridwall board for under $20.00 and you can too.
You see, I wanted a big gridwall memo board. I wanted it to hang over a couple of book cases in my office. And I wanted a little different look. I wanted a narrow frame around mine to give it a more finished look.
After taking measurements of the area where I wanted to hang the gridwall, we headed off to Lowe’s.
The Plan
My original thought was to use Concrete Wire that comes in sheets. Its strong and hard to bend. It comes in sheets 7′ X 3.5′. This wire does require a wipe down and some rust resistant spray paint in your choice of color.
My idea to make the frame would be to use strips of wood cap for lattice. The Lattice cap pieces are grooved, and allow the gridwall mesh to sit in the center . For a wood frame I decided that I could use some Weathered Wood Accelerator which I find at Home Depot. If you are looking for a quick way to weather raw wood, give this a try.
Imagine my surprise when I found plastic lattice cap in the color Clay (looks like driftwood) in 8′ pieces for $1.44 each! A perfect price and I didn’t have to stain or paint it. The color was designed to mimic weathered wood! If you are going for the $1.44 product, Order It Online so it’s ready for you when you get there. We had some confusion because they had another very similar product with the same name for $6.97 for each piece.
At Lowe’s we purchased one sheet of the concrete wire ($8.80), and 3 pieces of the Lattice cap in the color clay ($1.44 x 3), and one can of Rustoleum spray paint in flat white ($3.98). If you don’t have them on hand, you will need to pick up 3/8″ self tapping washer head screws. And you will need an L bracket for each corner.
We had screws and metal brackets on hand so the complete cost of our project was $17.12!
Let’s Make It!
We began by laying out the concrete wire. You’ll notice this wire is rusty, and yes it comes that way. The first thing we had to do was to snip off the sharp pieces that extended down each side. We used lineman’s pliers to cut through the wire. It’s pretty tough wire. Another way to cut off the protruding end pieces is to grind them off with an angle grinder. Gina at The Shabby Creek Cottage has a great video on how to use an angle grinder to cut the end pieces off.
Once the protruding wires were removed, we started taking measurements for the frame pieces. We cut the long edge pieces at 60 1/2 ” and the side pieces were cut at 41 3/4 “. these are just straight cuts, no mitered edges. We cut our pieces on a chop saw, but being plastic they can be cut with a hack saw.
After making the cuts we did a test fit of the pieces. We were happy with the fit of the farmhouse frame on the gridwall wire.
The Painting
As my “Partner in DIY” gathered the screws and plates needed, I was off to wipe down the wire and then spray paint. You can see here it’s pretty rusty and dirty.
I spray painted the wire panel with 3 coats of paint, and then gave it a couple of hours to dry
We again test framed the wire with the lattice cap pieces. Taking one small metal plate, we drilled pilot holes where we would need to put screws. You need a small bit to make the pilot holes. When you drill pilot holes, the screws will go in easier, and the chance of cracking the plastic is much lower. **Note: We used straight brackets because it was what we had on hand. If I were doing this again I would use L brackets to give it more stability, while you continue to work on the frame.
After drilling the pilot holes, we put a screw in each hole. We worked our way around completing all 4 corners.
Additionally to give the farmhouse frame some added stability, we screwed additional screws on the back. We placed screw close to the edge of the frame, securing the wire into the frame all the way around the memo board.
To hang the farmhouse gridwall we used pressure hooks. These easily gripped right on the frame.
