hey guys I'm Sandra with sawdust girl calm today I'm going to show you how to build this picture real it looks like an old reclaimed beam but it's not stick around I used my table saw to rip my 2x4 in half and then I cut off one edge of two of my one by four furring strips I'm sandwiching the 2x2 in between two of the furring strips gluing that together and then gluing that down to another furring strip if you don't have a table saw you can still do this project I had two by fours on hand so I cut them in half but you can purchase two by twos and you just wouldn't rip off the edge of the furring strips since I have a table saw I ripped off the slightly rounded over edge of the furring strip that will be joined up or glued up to the front furring strip and just to make a slightly tighter joint but it would work just as well without cutting that off and I did not use any fasteners I just used glue lots and lots of glue I glued the front and the two sides of the 2x2 and clamped the furring strips to the 2x2 and then clamped that assembly to that front furring strip takes a lot of clamps so if you don't have a lot of clamps you might want to use fasteners I'll let the glue set up overnight before I started the finishing process I used a scraper to clean up the glue squeeze-out and i was purposefully rough with it any additional scratches and blemishes I can create will just make it look really cool in the end when I put the finishing product on it I cut my beam roughly to length with the only saw that I could find in my shop because most of my tools are up in the studio and I took it upstairs to the studio tested it in place and cut it down a little bit more on my toursad that was upstairs then I sanded the entire beam although I'm not trying to remove any imperfections and simply making it smooth to the touch and removing any areas that will give me splinters or snags I sanded both with an orbital sander and by hand focusing on touching the wood finding the sharp and snaggy parts and then sanding them down any areas that felt like they were going to chip off I would go ahead and just rip it off and then sand it smooth once I felt sure I'd sanded away all future potential splinters I've a cube to weigh the sawdust and brought over my finishing product which is simply bry wax easiest to apply when it's softened or even melted and if it's a hot sunny day setting it out in the Sun is usually sufficient if it's overcast like it was when I was applying I just hit it with a heat gun throughout the application process to keep it soft and I'm just applying it with a clean t-shirt rag I'm using a combination of light brown Bry wax and also ebony the thing I love about using wax finish is that it dries really quickly so you don't have to wait long periods in between coats and you don't have to wait for it to dry so that you can see the true color and dry super quickly you can see what you're doing and what you've got what you're going to end up with in the end is what it looks like right now so you can just keep messing around with it and make it look how you want it to look and then install it it's fun when you're doing a distressed piece to bang it up with a hammer poke it with nils scratch it and then wipe somewhere of the colored wax into it and it fills the depression and makes it look darker in that area which is what makes it look more aged and distressed I went ahead and waxed the entire beam with the light brown wax and then I hit it with the ebony and I made a few more distressed marks so that they were filled with the black wax and I hit the edges and the corners and just random spots throughout sometimes I would put some black on and then I would immediately go over that with some more light brown - maybe blend it or I don't know I there's not any rhyme or reason to it it's just it's just your artistic process I can't say that enough you just mess around with it until you love how it looks and then you're done it's as easy as that now I wanted to add one more detail to the front of my beam so I drilled holes and glued in quarter inch wood dowels and I was purposefully rough when I was drilling and cutting I even added additional scratches just to make it look even more realistically old and distressed i sanded the dowel so they were smooth to the touch and then relaxed and the kind of kind of rough and grain on the dowels absorbed the wax differently than the smooth face so they stand out and they look really cool like old nails my final step is to go over the whole thing with a buffer it cleans off any excess wax and just makes it a little tiny bit shiny and penny was there to help me install my shelf bracket though I think you could do it with one person it was nice to have her hold it in place and let me stand back in eyeball and make sure we got it in the right in the right location I used my stud finder to locate all of the studs that this bracket is going to hit and it worked through the brick crown paneling which was awesome I secured one screw on the right side then we leveled it and I secured the left side and then I screwed in the rest of the screws to hit all of those studs and I'm using three inch cabinet screws then the pitcher ledge simply slides right on to that wall bracket since the 2x4 that I cut in half is exactly the same length as the one by force that are used for the top and bottom the bracket completely fills the space in the center of my picture ledge but I forgot to wax the end of my my wall brackets so I took the Shelf back down and waxed it and then put it back up the picture ledge fits tightly onto the wall bracket so I could probably leave it as is but I don't want to ever accidentally pull it off the wall I also don't want to never be able to remove it so I just shot some nails through the top and into the wall bracket and that holds it secure but I would be able to pry it off the wall if I ever wanted to the front piece of this picture ledge is about a half-inch taller than the sandwich of the two furring strips and the two by two so there's a little lip that keeps the picture frames from falling off with my picture ledge and photos in place and my lights installed this wall is complete and I really like how the faux brick wall looks behind all of that now that it's just a backdrop you can check out my blog post for more details on this project as well as a resource for those lights if you're interested thanks so much for watching and I will see you next time