I have been helping to renovate some of the exhibit barns up at our local county fair. When we pulled the old pegboard off the walls, we found this amazing shiplap. While I loved it, we heard some feedback from our volunteers that they really needed pegboard for displaying some of the exhibits. Being unwilling to cover the shiplap I needed to come up with a different solution for the pegboard. This tower was my solution and it has worked fabulously.
Construction Instructions:
Begin by cutting the pegboard. If it is a little smaller than 24 inches wide because of the cutting that is okay.
Attach the pegboard to the 2x2's on each long side.
Add all the pegboards to the 2x2's until you have 4 sides. Be sure that it is 24 inches from one corner to the next, even if there is a small gap at the edge. (The trim will cover it.)
Add the plywood to the top using screws into the 2x2's. Adding a weight to the top will ensure there is good contact and that the board is completely flat.
Add trim to the edges. Use a finishing nailer to attach it to the 2x2's. For the top and bottom I added an additional nail into the middle just to tack it into the pegboard but at the edges I angled it into the 2x2 on the sides.
I like to add a routered board to add dimension and detail to the tower.
I then cut it at a 45 degree angle and cut it to fit the sides as I want this to meet up exactly.
Then I used the finishing nailer to attach the four boards together and repeated this step on the top portion as well.
On top of the routered board, I used a squared-off board for additional depth and repeated the previous steps with it.
I like to add a trim piece to the edges of the plywood to help protect it and make it look better. This piece is very small and will split easily if there is too much pressure in the nail gun so I used wood glue and as few nails as I could.
I then painted the edges with dark grey chalk paint as a base.
After the paint dried, I added 2 coats of white chalk paint. When the paint got into the pegboard holes I just used a nail to keep it from blocking the hole.
Next, I used a sander to distress the edges allowing the grey paint and wood to show through. This gives it just a little more rustic character.
After cleaning off all the dust, all I needed to do was finish it. I used a finishing wax but if it was going to have heavy use I would recommend a polyurethane.
And that is all there is to making a rustic pegboard display tower.
