Interior Stone Wall Transformation in A Small Family Room

Today's post is a DIY project my husband and I took on last summer. We created a decorative faux stone wall and storage cabinet in our family room by transforming a wall to an organized stone wall. Here is how we did it.

First things first, you need to check out our poorly placed sump pump. When we converted the basement into a family room, we realized that we needed to cover the sump pump. We framed it out and added a removable lid. And, we included a foam cushion make it a seating area.

When the kids were little, they would sit on it and read. But now, we needed more storage for our board games. My kids love board games so we neede a space for it this room. Here's a before picture of how we created the storage cabinet below to hold games and photo albums.

How to create a built-in storage cabinet

We found a clearance sink cabinet at the nearby home improvement store that had cabinet doors and built a cabinet and built shelving around the cabinet. This cabinet would give me enough space to store my albums, and it had a hole in the back so I could get to the sump pump piping if needed.

I cut one insulated curtain and made two curtains. To add to the shelves, I used a pressure rod on each shelf to cover these shelves. What do you think? I am so glad we covered it because you could easily see what was inside of it when you sat on the sofa. Yuck.

Then, we started with the faux wall. We bought at Lowe's StoneCraft 9 Sq. Ft. Tennessee Ledgestone Flats. We got it delivered. They were pretty heavy. I think we bought about six boxes. We loved the stone because we did not have to mortar the joints.

Create a Faux Stone Wall

Then we cleared out space and prepped the wall. Wrapped the wall with tar paper and used roofing nails. Then we added the mantel in the center. The next step was to add chicken wire to the mantel and heater to cover the entire area. The next step was to create a texture with the mortar (Type S) to adhere the stone to the wall. I forgot to take the picture of these processes. Sorry. Let's just say, it was messy. If you plan on doing this, be sure to cover everything with heavy duty plastic. It then took 3 days to cure.

In the meantime, we laid out the stone so that would minimize the gaps. This method took a little creativity to reduce the gaps. That was my department. My husband was not interested at all in this part of the process. We measured the wall and used the extra tar paper at the same length as the wall and created the rows for the wall on the floor.

I brought down the stone two to three rows at a time using the boxes they came in. We laid out the rows near the wall on more tar paper, so we had them in the right order. Then, we started mixing the mortar and adding mortar to the back of the stone and adhering to the wall.

The photo below is the end of day one.

Here is the end of day two.

This photo is the end of day three.

This photo is the end of day four. We put up the molding around the top to finish off the top part near the drop ceiling and had it continue around the cabinet so it would look seamless.

And, here is the final product after cleanup. What do you think?

One last tip, be sure to read through the instructions a few times. There are many steps to this project, and it did help understanding what we were getting ourselves into before starting. I hope you like it. We love it.

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