Slat Wall Part 1: Prep Work

I think we're at an all-time low for our "before" picture--I had to get a couple screen grabs from an old video for photographic evidence of the way this part of the living room has looked for literally over a decade: piano, torchiere floor lamp, messy coat rack:

For years D has wanted to get the piano off of that wall. It is the "entryway" and really seemed like a bad place for the piano, not to mention the fact that it was right up against our baseboard heating, which was bad both for the piano and for allowing the heat to get into the house. Plus we really needed more storage.  Creating some kind of wall would help us be able to get rid of that tippy, cluttered coat rack without losing all the coat storage. We had an IKEA Expedit behind the sofa (see this older picture, used a few times already including here):

But this only gave us a few cubbies, especially because we deliberately left some cubes open to avoid making the entry way too dark.

We debated a few options:

1. Pony wall (waist high free standing drywall)
2. Different furniture
1. More and bigger IKEA Expedit (now called Kallax)
2. IKEA Pax
3. Vitsoe 606
3. Slat wall

The pony wall was dropped fairly quickly as they are fairly deep (since you need 2x4 + drywall) and not very functional. The more/bigger Expedit / Kallax was dropped as it doesn't allow for hanging clothes. Pax (wardrobe) would create a fairly deep literal wall and would take away a lot of space and light. The Vitsoe 606 is quite expensive (though they seem to hold 100% of their value) and we thought it could give more of a "did we just enter a SoHo clothing store" vibe? 

That left a slat wall, which had the advantages of taking very little space, allowing for light to filter, and giving some flexibility on how / where to hang coats. The major disadvantage being that it would need to be custom-built. 

But before really starting several important questions needed to be answered: dimensions of the wood, the spacing of the slats, and what kind of wood. First, D did a lot of measuring and then some mock-ups with cheap pine, mostly to convince himself (and me) that it was not crazy. Here's the entry view with the initial framing (all press fit, i.e. just held in place with friction) in place for what the space was potentially going to become. 

With the project given the green light (by me), the piano found its new home in the sun room, which really is a much better home for it:

Then we moved our Expedit against the now-empty piano wall (and, cats being cats, this guy had to inspect the area fist):

And now, with the space behind the love seat empty, the project could begin. D continued to use the pine boards for more testing and measuring. We tried a few different variations for the spacing of the boards to get a sense of what we liked. We ended up deciding on roughly a 2:1 opening-to-slat ratio.

D also worked with a few lumber yards and settled on a couple options to consider for our final product. He ordered samples of sapele ("African") mahogany (bottom, the redder/warmer one) and American walnut (top) to see what matched our existing furniture and space:

Hopefully you can see in addition to comparing the wood color itself, we tested how it would look stained/oiled. The left/lower side of each board shows each wood with Danish Oil on it, and the right/upper part shows it completely bare.

We decided on the warmer, redder sapele as the existing cabinets in the kitchen and living room had some of those hues. We ordered quarter-sawn S4S (finished on all sides) 1x6 boards. We paid them to rip most of the 1x6 boards in half to create 1x3 as doing it ourselves would have been annoying. 

And just like that, we were ready to begin...