Creative Faux Panels

FauxPanels.com and our sister company, FauxWoodBeams.com, have become frequent television stars through volunteering time and materials to shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. This Friday, Faux Wood Beams will be showcased; and check out our gallery to see faux stone panels used in a number of similar stunning home transformations.

Friends and neighbors helped out to make the Extreme Makeover possible.

Fauxpanels.com and FauxWoodBeams.com will mark their twelfth collaboration with ABC’s hit TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition this Friday, with an episode dedicated to the deserving Dunning family, of Delaware.

As part of their “Jusst Sooup” charity,  Dale and Ken Dunning get up at 2am every morning to cook delicious soup for distribution to seventeen local soup kitchens.

Inspired by their story, designer Ty Pennington and the crew of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition decided to help give the Dunnings a brand new home for their charity, in the form of a modern building built to look like a classic farmhouse.

To achieve the rustic look, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition reached out to FauxWoodBeams.com; asking them to create a towering king truss in the main room of the new home.

FauxWoodBeams.com was happy to help out.

Artificial wood allowed the team to produce a stunning interior truss that would have been impossible with real timber.

“We wanted the Dunnings’ new space to feel homey. An old-fashioned ceiling design made with modern materials was the perfect way to do that.”

The episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition featuring the faux wood truss and the deserving Dunnings family will air this Friday at 8pm EST / 9pm CT on ABC – and designers Michael Moloney and Paige Hemmis will also be appearing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on Thursday and Friday to raise money for Jusst Sooup.

FauxPanels.com has also been featured on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and many other shows like it. You can see a gallery of featured faux panels on our website, here.

Also, stay tuned for the biggest Extreme Makeover: Home Edition episode yet; their 200^th episode, in which FauxPanels.com and FauxWoodBeams.com will both be contributing to a project to rebuild homes devastated by the tornado in Joplin, MO.

We often see examples of how small changes can make a big difference – especially when it comes to sprucing up an exterior home design

Holli's original siding was finished with bland and boring concrete blocks.

One great example was recently sent to us by customer Holli Verhovsek; who used our Wellington Dry Stack wainscoting panels to totally transform her home’s exterior.

Holli’s challenge was replacing the boring concrete block wainscoting of her home with something more exciting. Her first choice was stone or brick; but the cost of laying actual bricks, or using real stone, was prohibitive.

That’s where our stone veneer panels came in.

Our dry stack panels are molded directly from authentic dry stack walling; and vividly rendered in durable polyurethane for a finish that’s practically indistinguishable from the real thing. Using them, Holli was able to get the classic look she was looking for.

From appearance alone, the only real difference between faux and authentic is that stone veneer costs a fraction of what real brick or stone would; and can be installed in a fraction of the time.

In fact, Holli’s project was the perfect canvas for using these panels. The broad, concrete wainscoting made it simple to first attach the recycled polypropylene drainage mats required by local and regional building codes, and then the interlocking faux panels themselves.

Wellington panels covered just a fraction of the exterior - but transformed it entirely

Attached to the drainage mat with regular construction adhesive;  each panel is then secured through to the concrete wall with screws set at twelve-inch intervals. Each panel interlocks for a quick, seamless appearance.

Holli didn’t tell us exactly how long it took them to install the stunning wainscoting panels; but customers who’ve completed similar projects have often boasted of finishing the project in a single weekend; or less!

And the results, as you can see from the before and after photos, are impressive.

What’s really great about Holly’s project was how a small change – in this case, adding stone veneer to just a  small area of her home’s exterior – made such a vivid difference.

Have you had similar results using our faux stone panels? If so, we’d love to see pictures. Email us at info@fauxpanels.com.

You can trim faux stone panels with a regular wood saw - making it a snap to install around fittings like garage doors.

Cutting faux stone panels to size makes them easy to install even it trick spots like doorways and corners.

Customer Cristian Angelescu is pretty handy with a hammer – but even he was impressed with the results of his project using faux stone interior wall panels.

An interior door presented hand man Cristian with a challenge; which he overcame with faux stone panels

Adding an accent wall to your home is one way to totally change the focus of a room – but brick, stone veneer or other stone surface treatments can be expensive to buy, time consuming to install and tricky to get right.

For Cristian – one of our handier FauxPanels customers – the answer was our Fieldstone faux stone panels. Molded from real flat stonework, but made from durable polyurethane foam, they’re easily installed onto any flat surface.

Christian’s job might have seemed simple – creating a faux stone façade on an interior wall with flat panels. However, a challenge that presented itself was the door, slap bang in the center of the wall. He’d have to cut around that to make the panels fit correctly.

Fortunately, polyurethane foam is easily cut to size with a regular wood saw; but working out exactly where to cut took some measuring and lining up to get right.

“Fortunately the panels are easy to cut and install,” Christian wrote, sending pictures of the stunning wall he’d created. “My tip is to use long screws angled from underneath to secure the panels.”

Using that technique, and working from the bottom corner and working his way up, Cristian created a seamless wall that vividly captures the look of authentic flat stone.

Understandably, he’s very happy with the outcome:

“The panels look great,” he writes. “I’m very happy with the result of my small project.”

Cutting panels to fit round doors, light fixtures and other obstacles is a challenge handy homeowners like Cristian have to embrace. Fortunately, those issues are manageable when you’re using faux stone interior wall panels to create vivid accent walls.

With authentic stone or brick, you’re looking at a problem even handy men like Christian would trouble solving.

It’s a little early for Halloween – but that didn’t stop one of our best selling products getting a spooky new address, courtesy of customer Richard.

A beautiful home needs a beautiful mailbox

We always love getting feedback from customers – especially when it includes photos! Just last week, we received an email from Minnesota, where customer Richard Elke has just installed his new Ashford River Rock Calico Mailbox.

“I wanted to move to that block, with all those gorgeous homes,” our customer service expert Shari admitted, “until I saw the street address!”

You wouldn’t be able to tell from the gorgeous pictures, but Richard’s new mailbox collects letters addressed to “Cemetery Road”! But don’t let the spooky name put you off – a golf course is actually closer than the Catholic graveyard Cemetery Road eventually leads to.

Richard’s mailbox is a great addition to his front lawn – beautifully matching the timber and brickwork of his gorgeous house. Just like the faux stone mailboxes we wrote about last week, the Ashford River Rock Mailbox installs easily, over a 4”x4” fencepost, and once installed looks just like an intricately hand-laid river rock column with a classic metal mailbox installed.

Fortunately, Richard's neighborhood is not as scary as the road name makes it sound!

The secret to the amazing look is the molding process used to perfectly capture the texture and detail of real river rock.

The mailbox column is molded in medium density polyethylene that recreates every crag and crevice, and is then painstakingly detailed with calico coloring until it’s practically indistinguishable from the real thing.

They’re available in brown, calico and grey – and the grey model is a FauxPanels.com best seller.

So is Cemetery Road the spookiest location for one of our faux stone products? If you think you’ve got it beat, make sure you email us pictures to info@fauxpanels.com. We’d love to feature them on the blog!

One of the advantages of our stone veneer panels is that they’re easy to install – but this is especially true when a project calls for installing stone veneer over interior brickwork.

Accent walls are currently very popular, and add scope and scale to a room.

Watch a recent home improvement show and you’ll notice something – accent wall ideas are all the rage. More and more designers are realizing that you can add a whole new dimension to a room by adding texture, color and design to one or more interior wall sections. Stone is an especially popular choice.

But there’s a challenge to adding authentic stone to interior walls: Real stone is expensive, difficult to install and time consuming to finish correctly.

Installing stone over interior brick presents a challenge because brickwork is porous and uneven. Adding stone requires at the very minimum a scratch coat of plaster over the brickwork to serve as a mounting surface – and this can take hours to put on and days to dry.

Most contractors, however, would recommend going a step further. Because real stone is so heavy, a metal lath is a better way to ensure the stone components stay where they’re supposed. That adds even more time and expense to the process.

Which is why stone veneer is a better option.

With our faux panels, you can get the great look of stone on your accent walls with little more than a wood saw and screw gun.

You can install the panels directly to the wall surface itself – no scratch coat or metal lath required. The panels can be attached with regular construction adhesive and screws; and are interlocking to ensure a seamless pattern across the entire surface. Check out our installation guides.

Regular constructive adhesive and screws make installing stone veneer quick and easy.

Installing stone veneer takes just hours; compared to days or more for real stone; and unlike the more expensive construction materials, our panels won’t tumble off the wall if there’s a problem.

And most importantly, they look great.

Molded from high density polyurethane, with textures lifted directly from authentic stone, rock and brick, our stone veneer panels weigh a fraction of real stone – but are practically indistinguishable to look at. Just look at our gallery of photos of projects to see for yourself.

If you’re coming up with an accent wall idea of your own for the interior of your home, do some research to compare the cost and ease-of-installation between our panels and real stone.

When Daniel Bruce built his brand new home last August, he wanted to add a final detail to the foundation design. Little did he know how affordable and quick that could be, thanks to our artificial stone panels.

In just a few hours, Daniel transformed the front of his home with artificial stone panels

“We constructed our house last August,” customer Daniel wrote to us, including before and after pictures of his project. “We had a poured wall foundation that left approximately two feet exposed in the front of the house.”

Although fine as it was, Daniel had a definite look in mind that he wanted to achieve with his new home.

“We wanted a stone look to be added to the top of the foundation,” he wrote, “but didn’t want to have to pay someone to come in and do this!”

The solution was to be found on FauxPanels.com. Daniel ordered our Cambridge Dry Stack Stone Paneling and set to work adding the final detail to complete his house front. Even he was surprised how easy it was.

“After purchasing the panels, it took us only a few hours to install them – in all, 24 panels! And this included having to trim the panels to meet our dimensions.”

Like all of our faux panels, our Cambridge Dry Stack can be glued or nailed straight to a concrete foundation – and you can cut it to size with a regular wood saw. Compare that to the hours of painstaking labor – and thousands of dollars in materials – if using authentic stacked stone.

“They were very easy to install,” Daniel admits, “and they look fantastic! The only details we had to add were purchasing the dark gray caulking to cover up the seams and finishing touches.”

As you can see from the pictures, the results were as impressive as they were speedy. In less than a day, Daniel’s home went from bare concrete to beautiful stone; for a fraction of the price of using the real thing.

Daniel signed off: “We couldn’t be more pleased with the cost, the work time, and the overall look to our new home!”

Our faux stone decorative columns make a great addition to a porch or garden; but are popular with customers for another purpose, too – as a good looking mailbox post!

Come rain or snow, our faux stone mailbox columns can weather it

Soggy letters, waterlogged packages and dripping envelopes are the last thing you want to find in your mailbox – which is why many homeowners want to invest in a letter depository that lives up to the unofficial creed of the United States Postal Service; vulnerable to neither “snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night.”

A popular choice is a  faux stone mailbox post. Molded from the same patterns as our popular panels, these tough and durable columns feature a built-in mailbox and a panel to display your house number or name.

They’re a great option if you have existing faux panels on the exterior of your home, because you can perfectly match the pattern of your panels or siding with your new mailbox; whether that’s dry stack, random rock or river rock. It creates instant uniformity; and the impression that your mailbox has been standing proud just as long as your home has.

These mailboxes differ from our regular columns in a couple of subtle, but important ways.

For a start, they feature a hinged mailbox built right into the column; for a safe and secure place for your mail man to leave your letters without them getting blown away, or soaked by rain.

Secondly, a large flat space underneath the mailbox gives you the flexibility to add your own house name or number. You can screw regular numbers straight into the tough, durable polyurethane.

And finally, the columns feature a subtle solar panel on the roof; lighting up the column at night so guests will be able to see your house number clearly when they come calling (and your mailman will be able to find your box even on his early morning rounds.)

You can install them easily over any standard 4" x 4" fencepost

These mailbox columns are easy to install. They’re designed to fit over a standard 4” x 4” fencepost, which you can cement into the ground for stability. Screw the base assembly onto a bottom ring, which drops straight over the fencepost, and you’re in business. Here you can find easy-to-follow instructions for installing our mailboxes.

One final advantage? In addition to being infinitely cheaper than building your own real stone version, these mailbox posts are built to federal crash regulations. That can actually lower your insurance liability, as each mailbox is less likely to cause injury or damage if somebody drives into it.

Take a look at some of the pictures from our galleries page and see for yourself how great they look.

DIY Network’s Money Hunters show always gives co-host and contractor Matt Blashaw a challenge; but in a recent garage makeover episode, he managed to stay within his deadline and his budget thanks to our Windsor Ledgestone paneling.

DIY Network's Matt Blashaw saw an opportunity to save money and add style to this garage makeover.

The idea behind DIY Network’s Money Hunters is simple – home remodeling projects intended to make more than their cost back in elevated property value. For hosts Matt Blashaw and Deanne Bell, that’s not always an easy task to accomplish; especially with home prices hovering at some of their lowest levels for years.

Which is why Matt was quick to turn to our faux stone paneling when it came to a recent challenge: The task was to turn a dank garage into a welcoming rec room – and do it for a third of the budget most contractors would charge. With just $25,000 to spend, Matt’s plans of adding a stacked stone accent wall should have been out of the question – but our panels made achieving that iconic look affordable.

“Look like stone? It does to me. But heavy like stone? No.” Matt picked our Windsor Ledgestone Panels because their low height made them easy and versatile for interior projects. “They’re made of high density polyurethane foam – the same stuff you see in car bumpers, dashboards… It’s durable stuff.”

“They look just like the real thing, and the best part about it is that they’re easy to install.” Matt was able to cut the panels to size easily, with a regular miter saw, and then install them with regular deck screws.

“They’re so easy to install,” he admits, “I feel bad. The cameraman is working harder than I am.”

Money Hunters ended up spending $2,000 on the faux stone paneling they used in the project – and compared that to a minimum of $6,000 for a real stone accent wall; not to mention the cost of hiring a mason to install it.

“That’s a steal,” Matt admits.

Check out the transformation yourself in the video below – and see our products featured in other home makeover shows on our videos and TV show page.

In Gillette, Wyoming, one FauxPanels.com customer wanted to make her home stand out from the crowd. Here’s how she did it with fake stone exterior siding.

Sherry Samuels, from Wyoming, loves the secluded street she lives on – with its quiet neighbors and cute little ranch homes. But while the lifestyle is great, the rows of identical houses don’t make for much variety.

Ledgestone exterior siding added a beautiful new dimension to Sherry's home.

Which is why Sherry decided to make her home stand out from the crowd; with our Carlton Ledgestone Faux Panels. She used them to replace the same-old, cookie-cutter exterior siding that every other house on her block used; and the results look incredible.

“The front of the house looks so terrific,” Sherry enthusiastically told us, sending in pictures of her home, and the neighbor’s houses for comparison. “I have gotten so many compliments!”

As we discussed before, pre-fab and modular homes make a great match for fake stone panels and the same design aspects that make those properties are shared with the ranches in Sherry’s neighborhood.

For instance, Sherry trimmed the panels to line the siding and wainscoting around the base of her porch – easy enough to accomplish as the Carlton panels are molded from durable polyurethane that can easily be cut to size with a standard wood saw.

Neighboring houses show what a contrast the new panels make.

The front of the home also features Ledgestone panels – which Sherry trimmed to size to suit the front door and large window. As a final detail, she attached contrasting window panels that finish the look and help give the seamless impression of real stonework siding.

“I’ve enclosed pictures of other houses in my street. These are my neighbors and the houses shown look just as mine did before I installed the panels.”

As a before and after, the pictures show what a dramatic improvement adding the panels made to Sherry’s house; and they whetted her appetite for further projects.

“Next spring we may finish and do the front gable,” she writes. Hopefully she’ll send us pictures!

Back in February, we blogged about how companies were able to create a truly incredible – and portable – trade show display using our stone veneer panels. Today, we’ll check out one Midwest wholesale company that’s taken that concept to a whole new level.

Willoway Nurseries have created a portable nursery garden as their trade show display

Willoway Nurseries are an Ohio based wholesale nursery that carry over 2,000 different plant varieties; all offered within an easy day’s drive of half the U.S. population.

For over half a century, they’ve provided some of the country’s most beautiful plants and shrubs to florists and stores across the country; and continue to seek out new business by attending trade shows across America.

Yet wherever the Willoway trade show team goes, they’ve found a way to make sure they bring a little piece of home with them. Their stunning portable trade show display looks as impressive and permanent as any garden center gateway; with sturdy brick columns and rustic cobblestone walls.

Willoway managed to achieve this with two types of our faux stone panels. For the cobblestone walls and flowerbeds, they used Carleton Cobblestone faux stone panels in beautiful Summer Tan.

For the towering columns that create the structure of their display, they used matching Carlton Brick Columns.

Stone veneer panels and columns have enabled them to create a stunning display that's entirely portable

The result, as you can see from these pictures, is impressive. Even more so is the fact that this sturdy structure can be dismantled quickly and easily and taken from one trade show to the next; something that would be impossible with real stone materials.

Check out our gallery of other trade show displays to see how other companies have used our products to create conversation-worthy showpieces – and if you’re a business owner yourself, make sure to send in photos of your faux panel trade show displays to info@fauxpanels.com. We’d love to feature them here.