My Debut Project: Stenciled Wall Hanging

I have been wanting to redo my living room walls for awhile now. I have grown bored with the stuff we have hanging up and I am ready to move on. Unfortunately, I can never find any large pieces that I like and I really need something for the wall behind my sofa. Then, on Pinterest, I came upon this Lemon Tree Creations post.

So, I bought 1 piece of 12" x 1" poplar board that was 12 feet long at Home Depot. The nice man at Home Depot cut it into half for me so I could get it into the car. At Lowe's, we purchased a rubber door mat that was almost 2' x 3'. The rubber mat will serve as a stencil.

The first thing my wonderful husband did was cut the boards into lengths if 34.25". This length matched the inside rim of the rubber welcome mat. Then he used his sander to smooth them down. (I am so glad I said "yes" to buying all of those tools!!)

Once the sanding was done, I used a tack cloth to get all the dust and then began staining the boards. I used MinWax Dark Walnut. The front of the board and all of edges are the only parts that need to be sanded and stained, and you will end up with something like this (this picture only shows 2 boards at a time; we bought only 1 welcome mat so we could only finish half the project at one time):

Once the stain was dry, we taped the edges of the boards on all four sides and then carefully centered the welcome mat on top of the boards.

I then sprayed off-white paint (I used Rustoleum 2X Ultra Heirloom White) over the boards. I used short, light sprays, making sure to get all angles. I then let it dry for a couple of hours. This is what it looked like:

After pulling off the stencil (mat), we sprayed the boards with a couple of coats of polyurethene. They are now ready for hanging!

I think they look really nice! Let me know how you think it all turned out! I will post another pic once they get on the walls.

Here they are on the walls!!