After setting up my home studio, I have a large sheet rock wall behind my mixing area that includes a door and a light switch. Now the room had been freshly painted and I was trying to come up with a way to improve the sound without destroying the wall. I saw some wall treatment at Lowes that looked interesting, but most of these would require stapling 1 foot by 1 foot squares to the wall.
Lots of work plus there is a door and a light switch to trim around and would destroy the wall. Next idea, since I really liked the look of wood, I could cover the back wall with some pallet wood. Accent walls look nice covered with wood, and sound wise, we know that sound is better bouncing off wood than it is bouncing off sheetrock.
Then another idea came to me, I could build art pieces from the pallet wood and hang it on the wall like pictures. Much better than nailing the wood to the wall which would tear up the wall behind it and no trimming around the door and light switch would be required, also, the art could be multi-level which would give me some slight sound diffusion, not much but every little bit will help.
Next step was to secure some pallet wood, fairly easy to do since most warehouses have a stack of giveaways. So, I secured a pallet wood crate, and began to tear it apart and get down to the planks of wood. Some I left nailed together and cut them down to sizes I could work with and some I tore down to planks.
Now the idea and planning stage. Came up with a few ideas, a Nashville skyline type piece, maybe a guitar one and the others I made with geometric shapes. One I was able to give the look of mountains.
The geometric shapes were by far the easiest!!
The process was starting with a flat piece of the planks and then nailing the designs on top of the planks. For the designs I used more of the pallet planks and I bought some red and brown cedar fence planks I cut down and used, I like the smell of the cedar. Some of the pieces I stained for some color and some I just left natural. The contrast of the light pallet wood and the red and brown cedar came out nice. Some pieces had 2 layers and some had 3 layers.
My thinking was, more layers would give slightly more diffusion for sound. Final step was some light sanding because some of the wood had splinters, just sand enough to get rid of them.
Installing was just like hanging a picture, I used a product called Monkey Hooks, very easy to use and they come in different strengths. No trimming around the door or light switch, so much easier than nailing or gluing something to the wall!!