Deco Shapes

Abby Barras Interiors from Area 10 Faith Community in Richmond, VA brings us this great live-streaming setup.

From Abby: Like most churches this past year, ours took an unanticipated leap (further) into the digital world on March 15 when we began livestreaming our services. We were fortunate to have a great crew of volunteer audio and visual technicians, some great equipment that was generously loaned to us, and the world’s handiest Creative Arts Director who made it happen on very short notice. As a designer, I am always impressed by quality workmanship, and these folks really pulled it together. I was happy to have the opportunity to support their efforts by dressing up the stage wall with some texture to give it more visual interest on camera.

I love a good woodworking project, and I learn something new from each one. Because the wall above the chair rail also serves as the projection screen, it had to stay clear, so I focused on the lower 1/3, which was the part seen on camera during the livestream. This was a relatively simple project (that’s really the only kind I take on) and is neutral enough to work with a range of different lighting, accessory, and set changes, depending on the season, occasion, or type of presentation.

I’ll give a brief run down of how I approached this project and some things to keep in mind if you decide to tackle it in your space. For this, I used 3/4 inch pine wood lattice moulding from Lowe’s. It was about $1 per foot.

First, you’ll obviously need to measure your space to know what parameters you’re working within, then sketch out a few options for the design you’re going for. I initially didn’t intend for mine to be symmetrical, but as I drew (with the rough measurements in mind), it just kind of worked out that way. I will say that it presents some challenges if there’s anything on the wall, like an outlet or light switch, that you’re trying to avoid.

Sketching out various patterns and calculating costs. In the end, I opted for the one on the bottom right and 3/4 inch pine lattice moulding.

Since math was never my strong suit, and I knew I was going to have to get creative to avoid the outlets, I skipped the front-end work of calculating all of the angles and measurements for the diagonal pieces ahead of time. Instead, I measured out the pattern of squares and the bisecting diagonal pieces and made a guide for myself with painter’s tape on the wall. Another option would have been to model it in 3D with a program like SketchUp, and then measure the angles there, but I didn’t do that this time.

Here’s a photo of the installation in-progress. And no, I didn’t do the project with the furniture in place- ha! The band had to come in to rehearse before I was finished, so I replaced the furniture for them and snapped a quick process photo before I cleared out for the night)

Figuring out the angles was a bit tricky. There are a number of ways to go about it. In the end, I used a combination of methods, namely, using a protractor and eyeballing it ;) Here’s an article about various methods you might use: https://www.hunker.com/13414007/how-to-figure-angles-for-cutting-wood.

I do want to highlight for the perfectionists out there (like me) that, as the aforementioned article states, “The hands-on approach is the easiest and most accurate woodworking or carpentry angle calculator method. Even if your angles work out on a calculator, they likely won’t fit without gaps. That’s because walls, projects, cabinets, frames and objects are typically not square. Moldings twist, bend and warp. Saws are not 100-percent accurate, and operator error is common. So even though your angles should each be 30 degrees, for example, they may not fit exactly because of those discrepancies.” (Oh good- it’s not just me!)

Once I calculated the correct angles, cutting them with the miter saw was another challenge. Those of you with more experience than me will not find this challenging, but I did have to do some googling to figure out how to cut a 60+ degree angle with a miter saw that only goes up to 45. Turns out, it’s a pretty simple hack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBsJfx4qnN4).

I went piece by piece measuring, cutting, and placing each piece of trim rather than making all of my cuts at once. With tricky angles to deal with, I didn’t want to get halfway through and realize that I had calculated something wrong and wasted a bunch of time and wood.

I opted to mount these to the wall with finish nails rather than using glue, although that would certainly add a greater level of security. I just didn’t want to rip up the wall and have to mud and tape it if we decide we’re over this look in a year or two. For that reason, I marked the studs on the wall and made sure to secure each piece into a stud at at least two places if possible. This means that the nails are not perfectly evenly spaced, so I countersank them and filled them with wood putty so they wouldn’t be noticeable.

This was the setup for the livestream for the first couple of months. The band sat on stage and the pastor preached from the floor in front, so the wood wall was behind his head in the shot.

In the end, it worked out pretty well, though there are slight imperfections in places which gets under my skin, but which no one else even sees. For projects like this, where you want clean lines and exact angles, wood putty covers over a multitude of sins, er, calculation errors. :)

(*The free-standing vertical wood panels in the first photo were from another project. They are 1/4 birch plywood and the bases are made from 1×6 select pine boards from Lowe’s)