The Loaded Grape is a wine and beer store in Greensboro, NC. They gave me the go-ahead to redo an 8′ x 40″ section of their store. I had the whole 8′ x 42″ wall to play with, and had carte blanche to work my artistic wonders.
So I took a bare wall with a few single wine shelves and transformed it into an industrial wood and pipe piece of art.
Not only do they get a better way to display their wines and Wine Club selections, they get a new focal point for the store.
The wood used for the backdrop was taken from a 20+ year old fence and repurposed into something useful again. Some of the wood was bowed more than 2 inches from end to center, but I cut those boards in half and straightened them with a table saw instead of throwing them out.
Check out the captions in the gallery below for more descriptions.
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This is the before photo. The wall is functional but doesn’t really catch the eye.
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So I stripped everything off the wall and laid down some vertical slats to attach the reclaimed wood to.
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Each board was sanded and “painted” with 5 different colors of stain to give them a rich texture. Then I applied a satin clear-coat to protection without too much sheen.
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The finished product. A wine wall that gathers attention from everyone who enters the store.
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The shop owner found the spotlight in storage, so I added it to highlight the Wine Club selections.
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A close-up of the Wine Club section. Yes, those are repurposed alphabet blocks, painted metallic silver and blue. The main sign letters are metallic copper.
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In case you hadn’t noticed, the main sign is raised with LED lights behind it. Gives a soft focus to the sign.
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I wanted everything space in such a way that there was no symmetry. There’s room to add other small items in the future.
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Made a sexy business card holder out of scrap wood and a repurposed tin L bracket that held an old wooden box corner together. Also, there’s a custom gauge!