DIY Lighting Project: A Beginner's Guide to Creating a Custom LED Strip Light Installation

As a DIY enthusiast, I recently embarked on a project to create a custom LED strip light installation for my home. The goal was to add some ambiance and lighting effects to my room without breaking the bank. In this article, I'll walk you through the process of creating a basic LED strip light installation using a wire channel, paint, and drywall anchors.

The first step in the project was to purchase a wire channel that could be used to get the LED strip behind a cabinet. The channel was relatively inexpensive and came with a built-in WiFi module, making it easy to connect and control remotely via an app. I chose this particular channel because it was one of the most basic options available, but it still offered plenty of features for its price.

To prepare for installation, I also purchased some drywall anchors that would be used to secure the LED strip to the wall behind the cabinet. These anchors were designed to screw into the drywall and provide a solid hold for heavy objects like lights. I chose these particular anchors because they were made from a durable material that could withstand the weight of my LED strip.

Next, I needed to drill four holes in the corner of the board where the LED strip would be mounted. The holes would need to line up with corresponding holes on the wall behind the cabinet. To do this, I used a drill bit and carefully drilled straight through the corners of the wood, allowing the drywall anchors to make contact with the surrounding drywall.

Once the holes were drilled, I moved on to preparing the area for installation. This involved making some little trays on the shelf where the LED strip would be placed. I also made sure that any objects nearby wouldn't interfere with the light's operation.

Now that we have all our materials and tools ready, let's talk about anchor types. For this project, the drywall anchors worked perfectly because they were designed to handle the weight of the LED strip and provide a solid hold in the drywall. However, if you're planning to install a TV or other heavy object, it's essential to use anchors that are specifically designed for such applications.

Another important consideration is the type of drywall used in your home. Some types of insulation can affect the performance of certain anchors, so it's crucial to choose an anchor that's compatible with your specific drywall material. In this case, the fact that my wall had insulation made a big difference, as the anchor was able to fill the gap and provide extra support.

As I began installation, I noticed that the drywall was surprisingly soft to work with. The anchor's point was small enough to fit through the hole without causing too much damage. This made it easy to install the anchor and secure the LED strip in place.

The final step in the project involved connecting the wire channel to my router via an Ethernet cable. I chose this particular option because it allowed me to connect to the internet without having to worry about Wi-Fi range or interference.

Now that we have our materials and tools, let's get started on installation! The first thing I noticed was how easy it was to install the LED strip. The wire channel fit perfectly behind the cabinet, and the paint job matched my wall color perfectly. This created a seamless integration with my existing decor.

As I worked on installing the light, I couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction. The project had been surprisingly simple, and the end result was well worth the effort. The LED strip provided a beautiful ambiance to my room, and the paint job added an extra layer of sophistication.

One thing that surprised me during installation was how much I enjoyed watching tutorials on YouTube before starting my own projects. The experience reinforced my passion for DIYing and encouraged me to keep trying new things. I also realized that there's no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to DIY projects – what works for someone else might not work for you, so it's essential to experiment and find your own unique solutions.

I also learned the importance of being patient during installation. Some parts, like the LED strip itself, were easy to install. Others, however, required more time and effort. In this case, the task was relatively painless, but I would have liked a tutorial on how to connect the cable properly before starting the project.

The final product is stunning! With its modern design and versatile color options, it's perfect for anyone looking to add some ambiance to their home. The LED strip installation itself was surprisingly easy, and the end result exceeded my expectations. Whether you're an experienced DIYer or just starting out, this project should give you a good idea of how to tackle similar tasks.

The only downside is that I ripped my pants during the process! But I won't let that deter me from trying new projects in the future. As a beginner, I've learned the importance of being patient and taking your time when working on DIY projects. With practice and patience, you'll be creating amazing custom installations like this one in no time.

In conclusion, my experience with creating a custom LED strip light installation has been nothing short of satisfying. From selecting materials to installing the wire channel, drywall anchors were instrumental in making the process seamless.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enokay we're gonna bring you another diy vlog type video and the lighting might look weird because we actually warmed up the lights these leds are temperature adjustable um because we're not gonna actually use these when filming so for vlogs and stuff it's gonna look really bad and i apologize so the audio because i'm not wearing a mic anyway as you can see here we've got some cabinets and stuff put together this is where the pc building slash review area is going to be much more cleaner environment that when it's just assembling a computer on to be out in the dirty shop but uh there's some diy stuff that i want to do and i figured take you guys along for the ride just like i did with my um home build that i did in that game room maybe it'll inspire some thoughts so get inspired right after this act the new h7 series from nzxt offers tempered glass side panels tool-less panel removal for easy installation front and top side 360 millimeter radio support and integrated cable management bar for clean cable installs to see the complete feature set and variations of the h7 available including the h7 flow follow the link in the description below so here we go this is some of the ikea brawler bro brawler stuff i went with it for a couple reasons one it was available um i thought about originally doing like a garage cabinetry setup thing but that was uh going to take way too long and it was way too expensive so one of the things that i did already is we stained the top this is just plywood that comes with it but i stain the top a little bit darker that way it matches but what i want to do is i want to come up with not a peg board but sort of a slap wall thing to go here and i was actually inspired by living spaces because they they use these kind of slat walls that they build as partitions to go between certain areas and i went i could do something like that but i want to use it here and then what i could even do is put some nails or some screws in it and i could hang like basic tools from it like it's some sort of a pegboard but it's a little bit more classy to kind of fit the space of what we got going on here so now we're going to transition out to our shop which is a perfect example of why i'm do have this set up this way now this would be the clean environment and then we've got the messy environment which is where we're going to go down so this is something that could get out of control really fast regarding the cost so that's why the wood that i chose is actually just the basic um pines let me show you the wood these need to be cut down to size and i already measured the rough size i want it to be in that space and i think it was 60 by 35 which is inches 60 by 36 so 60 inches high and i'm going to be spacing them out right so it's good it's going to probably look like a fancy palette on the wall that's fine i don't want to use a palette by the way talk about outdoor dog beds i did use a pallet for my dogs and then uh because they have an outdoor area that's covered and i use the pallet that i then screwed down artificial turf to which gets them up off the ground and then they like laying on it so i just figured i'd share but anyway pallets have a lot of use other than just moving stuff on none of this wood is going to be perfect and this is actually the finished wood which is kind of ironic but the problem is all the wood gets damp and then it will warp so what i've got to figure out here is how many boards do i need to get the 60 inches that i want in fact let me measure the depth of this table that might be a good it might be a good marker oh this table is only 42 inches deep well i'm not going to be building on the table anyway because of the stain the wood have to cut it down first the length of these boards though are 72 inches so i've got to cut one foot off of each of these boards so actually what i need to do is i need to cut these pieces here which i'm using as kind of a frame these are what i need to cut down to 30 inches and then i can use that or not 30 sorry 60 inches and then i can use that as my and 60 inches is 5 feet by the way if you're wondering i know that doesn't help you if you only speak centimeters and meters but let me mark that dude i have to mark them all because i don't i'm just going to be using my my radial arm saw which doesn't have like you know i don't have a long table that i could just put a stop on and just slide the boards in and cut slide in and cut trust me i'd love to have a full on wood shop i love doing woodworking i love working with wood none of this has to be exact science by the way i mean i guess it depends on what you're using i use the cheaper wood you could use a redwood and oak i also went with this pine because it's lighter i would have gone with redwood because it's the lightest wood of all the slats but um the problem is it's very expensive the redwood was like 23 aboard and i was like there's no way i'm gonna do all that all materials in on this right now about 180 dollars but that includes other things we needed for the shop so i i'm pretty sure i already had brad nails and whatnot i'll be using my air gun to assemble this but it's one of those things where it could be cheaper if i already didn't buy some extras of things so those are marked let me mark all of these boards one foot shorter that way we can then get to cutting get the staining get the sanding we need all these edges that's something with pine especially you see all these edges that are sticking up this would be a splinter nightmare so i will be sanding all these edges here and uh i will also be looking at the wood it's all going to have some sort of bend to it this one's pretty straight actually it's not too bad some of them though as you can see like this here right so i'll probably like that and the other thing too is i've got to come up with a mounting mechanism what on earth is this i've got to come up with a mounting mechanism to get it on the wall which is what these extra pieces are going to be for the the cross pieces i'll probably have two cross pieces potentially holes drilled through that going into anchors into the sheetrock so one thing i want to point out is even though these boards are pretty pretty measured um they are all different lengths check this out so look at this near the end right there they're not all the same link same thing with these boards here actually seem ironically pretty much well you can see a few boards here on this end are a little bit longer so what i've done is i've butted up the ends of them measured 60 inches and then drew a line all the way across and then i clamped them together that way i can more easily do a single cut to cut through all the boards because this would be more like a four by four pretty close to a four by four size my saw will handle that no problem that way instead of having to sit here and measure them all out one by one and do a ton of cuts i only have to do two at that point so a little tip there i just gotta make sure those but this should be okay i put some tape around that end because uh i need the clamps to also not interfere with the cutting surface of the of the saw also too if you know you have a side that's going to be waste put your worst ends on there like see how some of these ends are all messed up there's knots there's splits you want to cut off any of the crap that you're not planning on keeping some of the knots and things i left on here for character um pine is kind of crappy wood but it's cheap and it's light and that's why a lot of people like to use that's why a lot of furniture is made out of it so i just thought i'd point that out but i thought about i really thought about going with a better nicer wood but i just then it wouldn't be worth even spending the money on in my opinion this is just because i enjoy doing this kind of stuff this diy you know i mean the way it turned out in my home office game room was pretty good like with the backboard tv mount thing that i did uh inspired a lot of people and i want to do that again let's go cut so now i'm just going to use uh this is a pretty worn out sandpaper which is good i don't want to really sand it too much i just want to sand the edges get all the splinters off sanded down all my boards cut off the ends made them smooth deeper or i got as much of the splinter material off as i could i cut two 30 inch wait like 30 or 36 so i just screw that up oh yeah they should have been 36 inches not 30. so these will be used for the cross pieces for hanging them but now this is why i got multiples of them so let me cut down two more actually three more pieces at 36 inches i kind of going through now and picking the wood that i want to use i got more boards than i need because i wanted to be able to kind of pick and choose the grains and stuff that i wanted to mix and match and like i said at the end of the day this is going to look like a palette that's stained and looks pretty but once you put it on the wall then you imagine it with like maybe some screwdrivers and other pegboard type stuff which looks way better than this but it'll be more organized than this don't worry um it really doesn't look right until you stain it and that's that's what i'm excited for so let me go ahead and get this cut down to the right size because i measured once cut once it's always measured twice cut once you always make it shorter but you can't make it longer one thing i want to point out too is always sand with the grain not against the grain um that might seem like common sense to a lot of people but believe it or not if you go against the green then you cause all kinds of grooves and marks on the grain so always go with the grain okay so a total first take of never having made a mistake in this video totally did everything right the first time uh we're back to where we were so now i know that this is the height we're dealing with i can start laying out my boards i'm thinking one board width between will be a pretty pretty good gap i don't want too much of a gap but i also don't want it solid either i could go solid but i don't want to go solid i want to just i just use one of the little bits i chopped off there's a little shim and i should have another somewhere i guess i could use the 30 inch ones that i made totally did make it short yeah i could totally use that as a as she as i'm like nailing it down but this will also tell me like how many of them that i need and this is why we laid it out before we commit to it that doesn't seem like a bad gap because then you'll see the great wall through it still and i was actually debating doing some lighting in there that shines up through the back side and lights up the wall behind it although some of these are not exactly the same length and that's fine this is i'm not intending it to all be perfect in fact one of the things i did on my my board at home was i i sanded grooves in it so it looked all worn out over time like i intentionally made it look more rustic i'm not going for rustic on this one but it doesn't have to be perfect just wood come on people it's wood that's perfect look at that i might chop this down a little bit but if that gap if i scooch it all down like that i think i can fit one more board up there there we go so i think that spacing will work great personally so that's what the board will look like only it'll be stained what i've got to do now is i've got to get my first piece on here hang on to these shims that's basically what i'm calling these shims i'm only going to put one nail and you see i'm in setting it a little bit like maybe like 10 millimeters on each side because i showed you the boards are still not perfect linked with each other i want to make sure that they don't overhang too far remind me by me putting only one nail on the bottom means i'll be able to square it up as i do the next board and then put more nails in as we go barely short enough to they might go through into the board am i going to my work my my workbench i don't know we'll see we'll find out real quick if they're gonna there's one nail aha we're good i was expecting it to just not move because i i expected me to be the kind of person that was going to accidentally nail it to the workbench you know just one now if i want to do this right i would get nail filler and fill that in but this is perfectly fine remember this is still a youtube backdrop i mean it's not intended to be anything super special i want to make sure i have these as square as possible because once i put in that second screw it's gonna be more or less boxed in and i won't be able to change the angle of it farther down the line so yeah see how it's like sticking out on this side means i obviously have to square that up there we go well let's go ahead and go through and do this all the way down now one of the things that i had done here i can see is i had clamped it down to the table that way it couldn't move oh i think a couple oh no okay cool it didn't actually mail itself to the table that's a good thing so you can see some of the boards are a little bit longer like this one's quite a bit longer i could actually take my hat my hand saw and do it or i'll just leave it this character can see this one's shorter so it definitely looks handmade as you would expect check that out now i'm gonna lay it down flat because i know the the nails don't go through i'm just gonna put nails in from both sides now like if i were gonna do this properly what i would do is i would have actually had a table saw i would have cut a joint into this like a like a 45 which i can do with that no i can't need a table saw and then i would hang a piece of wood that had a matching angle to it that way they would like they would like connect into each other they would just hang on itself but i don't i don't have a table saw to do that kind of long angled cut that is pretty much it for the build now we need to make it great which means we need to stain it look at that fanciest palette you'll ever find but now you can imagine this on the back wall in that spot before i stain it let's go let's go put it up in the spot and see how it looks oop that's a wall there we go just like that and we'll center it that's gonna look good huh yeah it's gonna be matching wood that's why i said i'm really thinking about doing a strip light along the bottom shining up through it i really like this stain from mini wax it's an indoor water based not an oil base that dries really fast like 20-30 minutes so obviously gonna do the front side first i got a brush specifically designed for all stains because the problem with some oil stains is it'll pull the bristles right out of the brush this is the boring part so as you can see i'm just applying it getting it in all the grooves we'll come back when it's all done because then we're gonna have to wipe it all off you can see already the color it's gonna look so good so it's pretty much already dry to the touch it's still slightly damp i'm not getting any brown to come up on my hands like i said it is a 15 minute stain i didn't go nuts on the back none of this is gonna show honestly i don't think i'm completely done with it though i still think i'm gonna put and i need to go to home depot and get another rail if i hadn't cut that piece wrong i would have had it i want to put a channel along the bottom that i could put a strip light on shining up that way it's backlit and i think it'll look cool but what i'm going to do is i'm going to let this actually sit here and dry overnight with the fan on it that way it is 100 dry and we're handling it not getting stained on anything so for you guys um it's going to continue on being done tomorrow for us we're going to end for the day and i'm going to get the piece that i need and the light that way we can have it uh sort of all together so with the magic of editing it's the next day tomorrow all right so it's the next day here's how the back looks i didn't stain the back side obviously because it wasn't all that important but i did get the other piece of wood that i said i needed the stuff to hang it uh but i'm not done yet because remember how i said i wanted to rgb this that's what we're gonna do today so i need to chop this and then i'm gonna put the strip along here pointing up i had thought about like literally having the strip come all the way around which i guess i could still do and then i would just have to use this i bought a wire channel this guy this is what i'm going to use to get it behind the cabinet and i'll be painting this to match the wall that way it'll kind of come off the corner it's one of these guys it's just a basic govi wi-fi led strip pretty basic i won't even bother staining this because i'm not going to see it it's going to be in the center of that board and you won't really see it down through so before i can mount the light and stuff i got these these long screws are three inch screws and i've just got these uh drywall anchors so these basically screw into the drywall and the screw screws into that trash cans out trash trucks out there i apologize for the noise and i'm gonna drill four quart four holes in the corner through there into the wall so you can put the anchors in so i basically have this figured out so the gap was about the same all the way around so what i have to do now is i'm gonna drill straight through the corners all the way to the wall that way the holes go through the wood through the cross brace into the drywall that way i know that the holes will line up once the acres are in there so now what we have are four holes one in each corner of the board and four matching holes right here on the wall so now those holes will line up no matter what as long as it didn't get scooted from the time i drilled that hole to the rest so let's talk about anchor types real quick these will be fine for what i'm doing because all the force on this is coming straight down i'm just gonna be putting some light like screwdrivers and stuff made some little trays on here nothing heavy if you're doing like a tv or something on this i'd go with a full-on toggle or maybe a flare opening on the back and not the kind of plastic that exposes or expands when you put the screw in but the kind that actually has a you compress it and opens up and it clamps against the sheetrock because if we're mounting a tv or something heavy that has outward force because it's mounted away from the wall then it could pull out of the drywall so these are fine for what we're doing but obviously depending on your kind of drywall and the thickness and stuff you need to make sure you're using the right stuff it also drills its own hole as it goes see i just got this kind of a point that shows you how soft sheetrock is because the hole is small enough just to let the tip in there huh ladies you can just let it do the rest there we go and the nice thing is since this wall has insulation in it it grabs that insulation just fills that gap even more so it actually makes it stronger than if it were just drywall without insulation so this is just a basic govi light i i really started to like go better than lifx in my opinion i've had so many problems with lifx lights it's cheaper than philips hue it doesn't require a hub it just connects to your wireless you can control it via the app i just wish they didn't have white cable and now i just gotta go around stick it down so this part's really boring we'll show you when it's done so i didn't actually waste a lot see that's that's the amount that's left so cool gamer gamer super gamer wood oh this is sound actually this is party mode there we go oh i just ripped my pants oh yeah right there yeah i ripped my pants sick okay well good thing i'm going to the gym today because i brought shorts with me so i'm going to go change it's still self-dectivating so you can see my little conduit cover right there and then i just double sided decided to take this down here i hate that it's white i wish it were black but i think once there's stuff on here because this won't be this left empty so that's what's awesome about diy diy is literally do it yourself and i see a lot of times in comments in videos like this that are like i wouldn't do that i would do blah blah it's like that's the emphasis on the i why it yourself you know do what you would do that way it fits your design philosophies and needs so while i now focus on getting my ocd satisfied by getting this centered as possible you can satisfy your need to subscribe to this channel for more stuff like this and ripped pants and who knows what else all right guys we're done this project is done and uh you should share with me on twitter whatever ideas you've come up with i know it looks like a palette it's just a really fancy rgb palette gamer palette alright guys thanks for watching we'll see in the next oneokay we're gonna bring you another diy vlog type video and the lighting might look weird because we actually warmed up the lights these leds are temperature adjustable um because we're not gonna actually use these when filming so for vlogs and stuff it's gonna look really bad and i apologize so the audio because i'm not wearing a mic anyway as you can see here we've got some cabinets and stuff put together this is where the pc building slash review area is going to be much more cleaner environment that when it's just assembling a computer on to be out in the dirty shop but uh there's some diy stuff that i want to do and i figured take you guys along for the ride just like i did with my um home build that i did in that game room maybe it'll inspire some thoughts so get inspired right after this act the new h7 series from nzxt offers tempered glass side panels tool-less panel removal for easy installation front and top side 360 millimeter radio support and integrated cable management bar for clean cable installs to see the complete feature set and variations of the h7 available including the h7 flow follow the link in the description below so here we go this is some of the ikea brawler bro brawler stuff i went with it for a couple reasons one it was available um i thought about originally doing like a garage cabinetry setup thing but that was uh going to take way too long and it was way too expensive so one of the things that i did already is we stained the top this is just plywood that comes with it but i stain the top a little bit darker that way it matches but what i want to do is i want to come up with not a peg board but sort of a slap wall thing to go here and i was actually inspired by living spaces because they they use these kind of slat walls that they build as partitions to go between certain areas and i went i could do something like that but i want to use it here and then what i could even do is put some nails or some screws in it and i could hang like basic tools from it like it's some sort of a pegboard but it's a little bit more classy to kind of fit the space of what we got going on here so now we're going to transition out to our shop which is a perfect example of why i'm do have this set up this way now this would be the clean environment and then we've got the messy environment which is where we're going to go down so this is something that could get out of control really fast regarding the cost so that's why the wood that i chose is actually just the basic um pines let me show you the wood these need to be cut down to size and i already measured the rough size i want it to be in that space and i think it was 60 by 35 which is inches 60 by 36 so 60 inches high and i'm going to be spacing them out right so it's good it's going to probably look like a fancy palette on the wall that's fine i don't want to use a palette by the way talk about outdoor dog beds i did use a pallet for my dogs and then uh because they have an outdoor area that's covered and i use the pallet that i then screwed down artificial turf to which gets them up off the ground and then they like laying on it so i just figured i'd share but anyway pallets have a lot of use other than just moving stuff on none of this wood is going to be perfect and this is actually the finished wood which is kind of ironic but the problem is all the wood gets damp and then it will warp so what i've got to figure out here is how many boards do i need to get the 60 inches that i want in fact let me measure the depth of this table that might be a good it might be a good marker oh this table is only 42 inches deep well i'm not going to be building on the table anyway because of the stain the wood have to cut it down first the length of these boards though are 72 inches so i've got to cut one foot off of each of these boards so actually what i need to do is i need to cut these pieces here which i'm using as kind of a frame these are what i need to cut down to 30 inches and then i can use that or not 30 sorry 60 inches and then i can use that as my and 60 inches is 5 feet by the way if you're wondering i know that doesn't help you if you only speak centimeters and meters but let me mark that dude i have to mark them all because i don't i'm just going to be using my my radial arm saw which doesn't have like you know i don't have a long table that i could just put a stop on and just slide the boards in and cut slide in and cut trust me i'd love to have a full on wood shop i love doing woodworking i love working with wood none of this has to be exact science by the way i mean i guess it depends on what you're using i use the cheaper wood you could use a redwood and oak i also went with this pine because it's lighter i would have gone with redwood because it's the lightest wood of all the slats but um the problem is it's very expensive the redwood was like 23 aboard and i was like there's no way i'm gonna do all that all materials in on this right now about 180 dollars but that includes other things we needed for the shop so i i'm pretty sure i already had brad nails and whatnot i'll be using my air gun to assemble this but it's one of those things where it could be cheaper if i already didn't buy some extras of things so those are marked let me mark all of these boards one foot shorter that way we can then get to cutting get the staining get the sanding we need all these edges that's something with pine especially you see all these edges that are sticking up this would be a splinter nightmare so i will be sanding all these edges here and uh i will also be looking at the wood it's all going to have some sort of bend to it this one's pretty straight actually it's not too bad some of them though as you can see like this here right so i'll probably like that and the other thing too is i've got to come up with a mounting mechanism what on earth is this i've got to come up with a mounting mechanism to get it on the wall which is what these extra pieces are going to be for the the cross pieces i'll probably have two cross pieces potentially holes drilled through that going into anchors into the sheetrock so one thing i want to point out is even though these boards are pretty pretty measured um they are all different lengths check this out so look at this near the end right there they're not all the same link same thing with these boards here actually seem ironically pretty much well you can see a few boards here on this end are a little bit longer so what i've done is i've butted up the ends of them measured 60 inches and then drew a line all the way across and then i clamped them together that way i can more easily do a single cut to cut through all the boards because this would be more like a four by four pretty close to a four by four size my saw will handle that no problem that way instead of having to sit here and measure them all out one by one and do a ton of cuts i only have to do two at that point so a little tip there i just gotta make sure those but this should be okay i put some tape around that end because uh i need the clamps to also not interfere with the cutting surface of the of the saw also too if you know you have a side that's going to be waste put your worst ends on there like see how some of these ends are all messed up there's knots there's splits you want to cut off any of the crap that you're not planning on keeping some of the knots and things i left on here for character um pine is kind of crappy wood but it's cheap and it's light and that's why a lot of people like to use that's why a lot of furniture is made out of it so i just thought i'd point that out but i thought about i really thought about going with a better nicer wood but i just then it wouldn't be worth even spending the money on in my opinion this is just because i enjoy doing this kind of stuff this diy you know i mean the way it turned out in my home office game room was pretty good like with the backboard tv mount thing that i did uh inspired a lot of people and i want to do that again let's go cut so now i'm just going to use uh this is a pretty worn out sandpaper which is good i don't want to really sand it too much i just want to sand the edges get all the splinters off sanded down all my boards cut off the ends made them smooth deeper or i got as much of the splinter material off as i could i cut two 30 inch wait like 30 or 36 so i just screw that up oh yeah they should have been 36 inches not 30. so these will be used for the cross pieces for hanging them but now this is why i got multiples of them so let me cut down two more actually three more pieces at 36 inches i kind of going through now and picking the wood that i want to use i got more boards than i need because i wanted to be able to kind of pick and choose the grains and stuff that i wanted to mix and match and like i said at the end of the day this is going to look like a palette that's stained and looks pretty but once you put it on the wall then you imagine it with like maybe some screwdrivers and other pegboard type stuff which looks way better than this but it'll be more organized than this don't worry um it really doesn't look right until you stain it and that's that's what i'm excited for so let me go ahead and get this cut down to the right size because i measured once cut once it's always measured twice cut once you always make it shorter but you can't make it longer one thing i want to point out too is always sand with the grain not against the grain um that might seem like common sense to a lot of people but believe it or not if you go against the green then you cause all kinds of grooves and marks on the grain so always go with the grain okay so a total first take of never having made a mistake in this video totally did everything right the first time uh we're back to where we were so now i know that this is the height we're dealing with i can start laying out my boards i'm thinking one board width between will be a pretty pretty good gap i don't want too much of a gap but i also don't want it solid either i could go solid but i don't want to go solid i want to just i just use one of the little bits i chopped off there's a little shim and i should have another somewhere i guess i could use the 30 inch ones that i made totally did make it short yeah i could totally use that as a as she as i'm like nailing it down but this will also tell me like how many of them that i need and this is why we laid it out before we commit to it that doesn't seem like a bad gap because then you'll see the great wall through it still and i was actually debating doing some lighting in there that shines up through the back side and lights up the wall behind it although some of these are not exactly the same length and that's fine this is i'm not intending it to all be perfect in fact one of the things i did on my my board at home was i i sanded grooves in it so it looked all worn out over time like i intentionally made it look more rustic i'm not going for rustic on this one but it doesn't have to be perfect just wood come on people it's wood that's perfect look at that i might chop this down a little bit but if that gap if i scooch it all down like that i think i can fit one more board up there there we go so i think that spacing will work great personally so that's what the board will look like only it'll be stained what i've got to do now is i've got to get my first piece on here hang on to these shims that's basically what i'm calling these shims i'm only going to put one nail and you see i'm in setting it a little bit like maybe like 10 millimeters on each side because i showed you the boards are still not perfect linked with each other i want to make sure that they don't overhang too far remind me by me putting only one nail on the bottom means i'll be able to square it up as i do the next board and then put more nails in as we go barely short enough to they might go through into the board am i going to my work my my workbench i don't know we'll see we'll find out real quick if they're gonna there's one nail aha we're good i was expecting it to just not move because i i expected me to be the kind of person that was going to accidentally nail it to the workbench you know just one now if i want to do this right i would get nail filler and fill that in but this is perfectly fine remember this is still a youtube backdrop i mean it's not intended to be anything super special i want to make sure i have these as square as possible because once i put in that second screw it's gonna be more or less boxed in and i won't be able to change the angle of it farther down the line so yeah see how it's like sticking out on this side means i obviously have to square that up there we go well let's go ahead and go through and do this all the way down now one of the things that i had done here i can see is i had clamped it down to the table that way it couldn't move oh i think a couple oh no okay cool it didn't actually mail itself to the table that's a good thing so you can see some of the boards are a little bit longer like this one's quite a bit longer i could actually take my hat my hand saw and do it or i'll just leave it this character can see this one's shorter so it definitely looks handmade as you would expect check that out now i'm gonna lay it down flat because i know the the nails don't go through i'm just gonna put nails in from both sides now like if i were gonna do this properly what i would do is i would have actually had a table saw i would have cut a joint into this like a like a 45 which i can do with that no i can't need a table saw and then i would hang a piece of wood that had a matching angle to it that way they would like they would like connect into each other they would just hang on itself but i don't i don't have a table saw to do that kind of long angled cut that is pretty much it for the build now we need to make it great which means we need to stain it look at that fanciest palette you'll ever find but now you can imagine this on the back wall in that spot before i stain it let's go let's go put it up in the spot and see how it looks oop that's a wall there we go just like that and we'll center it that's gonna look good huh yeah it's gonna be matching wood that's why i said i'm really thinking about doing a strip light along the bottom shining up through it i really like this stain from mini wax it's an indoor water based not an oil base that dries really fast like 20-30 minutes so obviously gonna do the front side first i got a brush specifically designed for all stains because the problem with some oil stains is it'll pull the bristles right out of the brush this is the boring part so as you can see i'm just applying it getting it in all the grooves we'll come back when it's all done because then we're gonna have to wipe it all off you can see already the color it's gonna look so good so it's pretty much already dry to the touch it's still slightly damp i'm not getting any brown to come up on my hands like i said it is a 15 minute stain i didn't go nuts on the back none of this is gonna show honestly i don't think i'm completely done with it though i still think i'm gonna put and i need to go to home depot and get another rail if i hadn't cut that piece wrong i would have had it i want to put a channel along the bottom that i could put a strip light on shining up that way it's backlit and i think it'll look cool but what i'm going to do is i'm going to let this actually sit here and dry overnight with the fan on it that way it is 100 dry and we're handling it not getting stained on anything so for you guys um it's going to continue on being done tomorrow for us we're going to end for the day and i'm going to get the piece that i need and the light that way we can have it uh sort of all together so with the magic of editing it's the next day tomorrow all right so it's the next day here's how the back looks i didn't stain the back side obviously because it wasn't all that important but i did get the other piece of wood that i said i needed the stuff to hang it uh but i'm not done yet because remember how i said i wanted to rgb this that's what we're gonna do today so i need to chop this and then i'm gonna put the strip along here pointing up i had thought about like literally having the strip come all the way around which i guess i could still do and then i would just have to use this i bought a wire channel this guy this is what i'm going to use to get it behind the cabinet and i'll be painting this to match the wall that way it'll kind of come off the corner it's one of these guys it's just a basic govi wi-fi led strip pretty basic i won't even bother staining this because i'm not going to see it it's going to be in the center of that board and you won't really see it down through so before i can mount the light and stuff i got these these long screws are three inch screws and i've just got these uh drywall anchors so these basically screw into the drywall and the screw screws into that trash cans out trash trucks out there i apologize for the noise and i'm gonna drill four quart four holes in the corner through there into the wall so you can put the anchors in so i basically have this figured out so the gap was about the same all the way around so what i have to do now is i'm gonna drill straight through the corners all the way to the wall that way the holes go through the wood through the cross brace into the drywall that way i know that the holes will line up once the acres are in there so now what we have are four holes one in each corner of the board and four matching holes right here on the wall so now those holes will line up no matter what as long as it didn't get scooted from the time i drilled that hole to the rest so let's talk about anchor types real quick these will be fine for what i'm doing because all the force on this is coming straight down i'm just gonna be putting some light like screwdrivers and stuff made some little trays on here nothing heavy if you're doing like a tv or something on this i'd go with a full-on toggle or maybe a flare opening on the back and not the kind of plastic that exposes or expands when you put the screw in but the kind that actually has a you compress it and opens up and it clamps against the sheetrock because if we're mounting a tv or something heavy that has outward force because it's mounted away from the wall then it could pull out of the drywall so these are fine for what we're doing but obviously depending on your kind of drywall and the thickness and stuff you need to make sure you're using the right stuff it also drills its own hole as it goes see i just got this kind of a point that shows you how soft sheetrock is because the hole is small enough just to let the tip in there huh ladies you can just let it do the rest there we go and the nice thing is since this wall has insulation in it it grabs that insulation just fills that gap even more so it actually makes it stronger than if it were just drywall without insulation so this is just a basic govi light i i really started to like go better than lifx in my opinion i've had so many problems with lifx lights it's cheaper than philips hue it doesn't require a hub it just connects to your wireless you can control it via the app i just wish they didn't have white cable and now i just gotta go around stick it down so this part's really boring we'll show you when it's done so i didn't actually waste a lot see that's that's the amount that's left so cool gamer gamer super gamer wood oh this is sound actually this is party mode there we go oh i just ripped my pants oh yeah right there yeah i ripped my pants sick okay well good thing i'm going to the gym today because i brought shorts with me so i'm going to go change it's still self-dectivating so you can see my little conduit cover right there and then i just double sided decided to take this down here i hate that it's white i wish it were black but i think once there's stuff on here because this won't be this left empty so that's what's awesome about diy diy is literally do it yourself and i see a lot of times in comments in videos like this that are like i wouldn't do that i would do blah blah it's like that's the emphasis on the i why it yourself you know do what you would do that way it fits your design philosophies and needs so while i now focus on getting my ocd satisfied by getting this centered as possible you can satisfy your need to subscribe to this channel for more stuff like this and ripped pants and who knows what else all right guys we're done this project is done and uh you should share with me on twitter whatever ideas you've come up with i know it looks like a palette it's just a really fancy rgb palette gamer palette alright guys thanks for watching we'll see in the next one\n"