Horizontal Wood Paneling

[Patrick Kane]

I am in the midst of rearranging our spare bedroom/office/storage room into more of a suitable permanent work from home setup. Namely, i want a new desk that isnt from Ikea, and i dont want a metal storage rack as my backdrop on Zoom/Teams calls. Looks like work from home will be a permanent 2-3 days a week for me moving forward. My current plan is to move all the racks to the one wall, have a new desk L into the middle of the room about 4' from a wall, and have my back to that wall. Clean backdrop for video calls. However, i was in my actual office last week, and ive always liked the look of this horizontal white oak paneled accent wall. I need to study it a bit more closely in person, but it looks like very thin veneer(1/16"-1/8" thick) with all 4 sides chamfered slightly and face nailed to the wall in a running bond. I dont know if construction adhesive was used behind it, but ive seen brad nailheads. Finally, the corners are capped off with a thicker piece of oak molding to hide the ends. I think this would look fantastic in my space done in walnut with some accent lighting on it. Here is my question, how would you go about recreating this at home? Resawing walnut is no big deal, but should i adhere the thin veneer onto an MDF backing before applying it to the wall? I dont understand how to prevent the thin planks from cupping like crazy if they are applied directly to the wall. This is more of a finish carpentry question, i suppose, and an area of this craft that i dont have much experience with.

The wall in question is 8' tall and 14' long.

[Jamie Buxton]

Isn't it just flooring applied to the wall? It'd be engineered flooring -- that is, thick veneer on plywood-ish substrate. In the flooring world, those chamfers are called microbevels. Dunno if it is fastened with flooring adhesive, or it has blind nailing in the tongue-and-grooves along the sides. It is probably prefinished.

[Patrick Kane]

Interesting, i didnt think of making it like flooring.

From the 3 minutes ive spent looking at the wall up close while filling up my yeti with water, it appears to be very thin. I doubt its any thicker than 3/8"-1/2". I think i might try to tackle this by skinning the plaster wall with 1/4" MDF screwed into the studs. Then, go about gluing and brad nailing the walnut veneer to the MDF. Looks like 4-5" wide flatsawn walnut will move about 1/32" inside my house, and i think i can get away with disregarding wood movement in this instance. Im going to take your advice and run a small rebate/shiplap joint along each strip of walnut veneer. I think it will be hard to do any form of T&G joint in such thin pieces. Once the wall is in place, i can sand and finish it as one. This is an instance where Rubio will be nice to use, because of the no VOCs.

[Tom M King]

I'd just use regular tongue, and groove. It doesn't need to be glued. Just toenail right above the tongue, where it won't be seen, like flooring.

Maybe make a jig to laminate pieces, if you want to use the veneer.

[Jamie Buxton]

I was thinking you could just go buy flooring. That’s much easier than making it yourself. (I bet whoever built the wall in your office didn’t build anything, they just bought readily-available stuff.)

Now, if you want an effect you can’t get with readily-available material — different species, different dimensions, etc — then you get forced into making your own.

[Ron Selzer]

paint the wall same or slightly darker shade than the wood incase any joints open up or crack

[Bob Cooper]

patrick....i installed a lot of horizontal wood in my office and in my basement. The milling is called "nickel gap" as the gap between the boards is about that wide. i actually had my local mill shop mill most of this for me though when i ran out i had to make my own using a router and/or table saw -- i tried both techniques. I can send you the specs of the cuts if you're interested. The wood shown here is cypress.2021-06-12 20.14.08.jpgIMG_1562.jpg