DIY: Torched Wood Accent Wall

For the final round of the CWTS contest, we scrambled to finish our basement renovation which included the staircase leading down to the basement. The whole "reclaimed wood" wall has been all the rage lately, but we wanted to put a bit of a different spin on it. There's a million and one different tutorials online that various procedures people have concocted (some with a million steps too), each giving a slightly different effect. As per usual, we wanted a neutral colour and really racked our brains on how to achieve that perfect charcoal colour. As well, we wanted a process that didn't have too many steps since we were on a time crunch. Then (with a brief flashback to a surreal moment from my childhood when my house was reduced to a charred frame after getting struck by lighting) it hit is: "we're trying to achieve charcoal colour... why not just burn it??" A quick google search showed that this was nothing new and that the Japanese have been doing it for years in a process called "shou sugi ban". We did some extensive testing and came up with our own recipe for that perfect frame broiled taste look.

Materials

-Wood (We used rough pine from Home Depot)

-Jig saw

-Blow torch (We used a handheld BernzOmatic TS8000 with MAP cylinder, but you can get larger propane torches that will get the job done faster)

-Junction box extenders (if there are electrical devices on your wall)

-Screws (we used drywall screws to match the dark colour of the wall)

-Hand tools to beat up the wood

-Minwax Classic Gray stain

-Cloth

-Latex gloves

-Varathane satin finish (with HVLP gun + compressor, or use aerosol version of product)

-Wire brush (optional)

Wood

We used full measure rough pine we found at Home Depot. This is full of knots and raised grain. It has a great rough cut texture and some pieces even have dents/impressions from machine rollers. We cut the wood pieces to fit the wall/staircase first, numbering each piece to remember where they went. You should make your cut outs for electrical boxes at this stage too. Note that you will need to add junction box extenders to account for the thickness of the wood. Once all the pieces were cut, we mounted them by drilling pilot holes and screwing them to the studs with drywall screws. We used drywall screws because of their dark colour, which would match the finished burned colour. Buy screws long enough to bite into the studs at least 1/2", accounting for the thickness of your wood and drywall.

Test

We used two of the full 12' boards to make test swatches for developing our process. We tested different burn amounts (light burn, medium burn, dark burn, double burn), various stains (pre and post burn), wiping stain off vs leaving it on, double burning, etc. We tested tons of combinations! The process that came closest to the dark gray look we had in mind was a medium burn, manually beat up the wood, stain with Minwax Classic Gray, then a light satin finish to seal it all in. As with any project, you should run a test scrap from start to finish to make sure the final result is what you want!

Burn

Start with your cut piece of rough pine and burn it with the torch by making multiple passes back and forth. As with spray painting, don't stop and change direction while you're burning or you'll get uneven colouring at the ends. Instead, pass your torch off the edge of the wood before you change direction. Practice your burn technique on scrap wood until you're comfortable getting an even, uniform colour on the board. The key is holding the torch the same distance away from the wood for all passes and moving the torch at a uniform speed. You should overlap a little bit with your last stroke, enough to get even coverage. Alter your burn speed and torch distance to get the colour you want. We initially burned the wood heavily until it was pretty much black, which looked awesome, but we had a lighter colour gray in mind. We ended up settling on a "medium burn" which really brought out the grain pattern of the wood, but left a bit of residual warm amber colour. This was later neutralized with the gray stain.

Beat
Once you have your wood pieces burned, you can add a bit of extra wear and tear to the wood by beating it up with hand tools. We used a hammer, hammer + screws, hand saw, and a drywall rasp; but you can use anything really!

Stain

Once the wood is beaten to your liking, apply your stain. We used Minwax Classic Gray which really knocked down the warm wood tones to give that neutral gray look. We applied the stain with a brush to the freshly burned and beaten wood and rubbed it off with a cloth. A lot of the ash will come off at this stage too.

Notice how the gray stain (left) neutralizes the otherwise warm tones of the unstained wood (right).

Clear Coat

You probably really like the way your wood looks now, but you need to clear coat it to seal in the loose particles, especially if your wood will be used indoors. We used Varathane satin finish sprayed through an HVLP gun. You could also buy aerosol cans of spray varnish, but that can get expensive depending on how much area you need to cover. 

This stage is crucial because it could ruin your project. The key is applying multiple THIN coats until you can rub the wood without it leaving black marks. Coat the wood too heavy though and it will ruin the look. This actually happened to us - we loved the matte black charcoal look but put the satin clear coat on too heavy and made it look really cheesy. After freaking out a bit, we used wire brushes and scuffed the clear coat to roughen it up and bring it back to a matte finish. We did this after mounting the pieces back onto the wall.

There you have it, a torched wood wall in four steps! Have a wood wall of your own? Share it in the comments below!