I’ve recently restyled my daughter’s bedroom and one of the key features I created for this is a panelled sun beneath the window. I thought about doing a painted sunrise mural but decided doing the sun in wood would add some more interested textures so it seemed like a fun thing to try. It was really simple to do and didn’t take long – let me show you how.
Things I used:
- Pencil
- String
- Tape measure
- Wood strips – I used 10mm deep x 35mm wide ‘D moulding’ but you can use wider strips to give a chunkier look
- Saw to cut the wood strips (jigsaw is easiest, but if you don’t have one a hand saw will work fine).
- Sandpaper
- Nails/tacks to attach to the wall (you can use screws, wood glue or sticky pads if you don’t want to nail). If you’re not allowed to attach things to the wall you can try pads like command strips which are removable and will let you take the wood strips off again in the future.
- Drawing pin or something to pin/hold string to the wood temporarily.
- You might want to use some wax, oil or varnish to protect the wood if this is something you do where it could get water, food or sticky fingers on the wood! (if you do it’ll be much easier for you to treat the wood before fixing it to the wall).
The first step for me was to work out the size I wanted it to be. I measured the height between my skirting board and windowsill, then subtracted a little bit so the sun almost filled the gap up. Then, I made my cutting template. To do this I tied the string to the pencil (with hindsight, using some tape would have been easiser!) and then measured the string from the pencil to be the length I wanted my sun to be.
The next thing was to mark out the wood for cutting. I laid the wood strips out on the floor and spaced them out so they were the height I wanted my finished sun to be. I used my pencil as a guide to space them out evenly. After this I used my pencil and string to work out where the center of the sun would be. To do this I held the pencil at right angles to the wood strip at the bottom corner, and stretched the string out along the bottom. I then pinned it in place at the end. Then, holding the string taught and the wood in place with the other hand I used the pencil to lightly trace out a curve on the wood strips, so I could see where to cut. Doing it this way meant I had a (nearly!) perfect semicircle marked out. To avoid wasting the wood I moved the strips over to make the cuts as close to the edge as possible.
After this I cut the wood to shape using the saw, so all the pieces had a curve on both ends. I then used some of the smaller offcuts to cut out rays, and sanded all the edges down so they were nice and smooth. I saved the rest of the wood strips and bigger offcuts for another project.
Next, I fixed them to the wall. I used the skirting board to give me a nice level edge at the bottom, then attached the strip to the wall. Once it was secure I used the pencil to space out the gap between this and the next strip then attached it in the same way, taking care to line up the curves at both ends to have a semicircular sun. Once the sun was in place I then attached the rays in a similar manner to finish the effect.
It was a really super simple project that didn’t take long but has given my daughter a beautiful feature for her room. If you check out the pictures you’ll see I had previously painted a very simple sunrise colours mural on the wall the sun was going over – this looked good but I felt was missing something, which the wooden sun really completes. You don’t have to do this though – the panelled sun will still work really well against a plain or solid colour wall.
I’d love to see how you take this idea and make it your own – I can’t wait to see what you create! If you do post it please tag me so I can see 🙂
Have a wonderful day,
Helena xx.
