DIY Bloomingville wall feature replica

Both my partner and me are both fans of ‘the imperfect’; we like reclaimed wood, scuffed edges, furniture pieces with a bit a history and character. The strange thing about doing up a wonky, dirty house I guess is the fact that once you finally get to the stage where everything is clean, straight and white, you want to KEEP it clean, straight and white! It’s safe to say this whole process has really influenced our interior design preferences.

Therefore, with the amazing geo patterned Eyffinger wall paper we chose for the bedroom (the grey version) an angular, calculated trend in the room was set.

geo wallpaper

copyright karwei.nl / eijffinger wallpaper

About a year ago we made a road trip to Scandinavia and, not that I wasn’t aware of it before, but I REALLY REALLY like Scandinavian design. One brand I have liked for a while now is Bloomingville. Their products have mid range prices, making them only affordable (to me at least) when they’re on sale. I have been drooling over their wall features for a while now, they have several geometrically shaped wooden displays in their collection.

screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-11-06-43 screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-11-18-52screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-11-19-05I wasn’t willing to pay the asking price for them though and decided to try and make one myself. A little bit cheeky, I decided to order a Bloomingville hexagonal shelf from an online shop with a generous return period intending to have a better look upclose before returning it. Copy cat? Ehm, let’s call it ‘making a replica’.

When the shelf arrived, it complimented the wallpaper very nicely, as I expected. But I was surprised by the quality of the wood. It weighed nearly nothing and it was very soft, making it very prone to any kind of damage. It was so not worth the asking price of 150 Euro!

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What I also didn’t like was the extra bit of wood that you had to use to attach it to the wall. Such a shame to mess up the simplicity of the honeycomb shape like that. I was sure I could do it better!

The process really was dead simple.

  • I measured the Bloomingville shelf, as I liked its size, and cut six pieces of 18mm plywood to the same length. Bear in mind, these days, lots of DIY shops offer (often free) woodcutting service. So if you’re not too tool-savvy yourself, try and go to your local DIY shop to ask for help.
  • I cut the pieces off at a 30 degree angle (180 divided by 6, because 6 shelves, is 30)
  • I used PVA glue to glue the pieces together. This PVA had a drying time of about 20 minutes, which gave me plenty of time to check that the diagonals of the hexagon all measured the same length, because that’s the way to check if a hexagon is even. Clamping a hexagon is nearly impossible, so I used masking tape to tightly bond the edges together, like this:
    img_8244 I then gave it some extra pull by taping it all the way across, which, to be honest, was probably completely useless.img_8241

After the project was dry, I started fiddling around with the metal hanging slots I had lying around, I usually use them for the wooden lights I sell on Etsy. There are two different types of hanging slots. Obviously it’s nice to attach a keyhole plate completely flush or countersunk into the wood, but I always find it a lot of hassle to drill or router into the wood. PLUS… the plywood is too thin to drill a hole the size of a screw-head into, it would probably tear the wood. So I chose to use the lazy keyhole slot plate (see image below) and the fact that there’s about a millimetre of space between the wall and the shelf is hardly noticeable.keyhole-slots

Obviously because of the shape of the wall shelf, placing the slots vertically isn’t an option. I therefore chose to attach them on opposite sides of the hexagon and attaching them making a clockwise rotary movement. Make sure to use the proper drill bits in the wall, good wall plugs and check that the heads of your screws are compatible with the keyhole slots.

 

I was indecisive about how and what height I wanted to add shelves, so I added the slot plates and took a break to admire the shelfless version…
a very minimal hexagonal shelf

The last step of the process: adding a shelf/ shelves. I decided to go for one shelf which I placed at around two thirds of the height. I didn’t do any accurate measuring, I guessed the length, cut off another bit of plywood and cut the ends at a 30 degree angle again.

And here’s the result…

img_8322 img_8314hexagon-finished

 

I’m very happy about the result! It’s a nice little feature on our bedroom wall; not too invasive, stylish, scandi-style and customisable. Just how I like it.

Total cost of project: 8 Euro

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