Creative Faux Panels

Thanks for all your support over the last twelve months. After this exciting year, we can’t wait to see the pictures and project details you guys send us in 2012.

2011 has also seen Faux Panels involved in some really exciting charitable projects – including donating our time and products to deserving families in partnership with top-rated TV shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. That felt really good – giving back to those in need after all our customers have given us.

From the entire Faux Panels team, we’d like to thank you for your patronage, friendship and support over the last year – and look forward to ringing in many more in partnership with you. Please keep reading the Creative Faux Panels blog, and don’t forget to send your pictures and project reports to us at info@fauxpanels.com – we’d love to feature them right here.

Happy holidays, and best wishes for 2012!

Millions of Americans were hit hard by Hurricane Irene last weekend; with some suffering devastating damage to their homes and properties.

Stone veneer panels are great for installing in a finished basement; even one prone to flooding.

Fortunately, many of us on the east coast escaped with relatively minor damage; losing shingles, water in the basement and other inconveniences that remind us of just how lucky we were.

While repairing roofing and cleaning out a flooded basement is a pain, many turn the inconvenience into an opportunity; turning simple repair and maintenance work into an excuse to start, or finish, a home remodeling project they’ve been putting off for a while.

Our faux panels, exterior siding and other faux stone, brick and wood products are great tools for making the most of these remodeling projects, as they’re affordable, easy to install and 100% waterproof; which is especially relevant as many of us are being forced to reevaluate just how vulnerable our homes are to water.

Even better, if a post-flood home design project is on the “to-do” list, this Labor Day you can instantly save 5% when you order faux panels online by using a special Labor Day sale coupon FauxPanels.com has created.

Labor Day sale coupon

It’s easy to use. Just shop for what you want online, at fauxpanels.com, and then enter the Labor Day sale code at checkout – SMP11.

This savings code is valid throughout September 5, 2011 – and must be used at the time of purchase and cannot be combined with any other savings or sale offer.

Let us know what you buy – and how you use them! And if you send in before and after photos to info@fauxpanels.com, we might even ask to use them on our blog!

New styles, new colors, new projects, oh my! It was a year of creative abundance and renewal in all things Faux, and as the very successful year of 2010 winds down, we can only look forward to what’s in store for us and our customers’ homes and projects in the upcoming year. There’s so much that happened, it’s hard to encapsulate – but here’s a snapshot of what was a very merry year of Faux Panels.

New Lines and Styles

	Cambridge Panels
	Carlton Fieldstone
	Nailon Stone Wall Siding
	Raised Grain Panels
	Wellington River Rock Panels
	Windsor Random Rock Mailbox
	Woodland Panels
	Universal Accessories

New Colors for Old Favorites

New color choices were added to the ever-popular Carlton and Norwich lines, making it even easier to find the right faux panels for your design project, indoors or out. Harvest, Desert Sky, and Smoke are now available on Carlton’s Cobblestone, Ledgestone, and Castle Rock styles, while Norwich’s Colorado Stacked Stone is now available in Toasted Vanilla.

Ledgestone in Harvest

Cobblestone in Desert Sky

Castle Rock in Smoke

Stacked Stone in Toasted Vanilla

To see all the new customer projects, head over to our photo gallery and testimonials pages which just keep getting bigger! We hope the best for you in 2011 and can’t wait to see what you can accomplish with Faux Panels this year.

Building a stone wall sure sounds like a masonry project. But with faux stone veneer, it’s actually a carpentry project. And a fun one at that.

The main ingredients for a faux stone wall are:

- Your choice of faux stone panels
- Complementary faux stone wall caps and capitals
- A wood-framed wall to attach the panels and caps to
- Optionally, faux columns or posts

Faux stone panels

Start by choosing the stone design and color you like. All our panels are suitable for outdoor use. Panel height is different for different product lines, and this might affect your choice. For most efficient use of materials, you’d want the wall height to be a multiple of the panel height, or a little less.

Faux stone wall caps and capitals

The wall caps come in gray and tan to complement just about any panel color. They also come in two widths. For this project you want the standard (narrower) ones, which are sized to fit a paneled wall framed with 4-inch lumber. The wider ones are sized to fit a paneled 8-inch block wall.

If your wall has some length to it, consider adding decorative capitals on top of the wall cap at intervals to really dress it up.

Wood-framed wall

The core of your beautiful faux stone wall is an ordinary wood-framed wall built with 4x4s, 2x4s and sheathing. It’s really half-wall, half-fence, because you have to sink the 4x4s into the ground and anchor them in concrete to support the wall.

So plan the wall just as you’d plan a fence, anchoring the 4×4 posts no more than 8 feet apart. Then frame a wall between them with 2×4 top and bottom plates, and studs spaced 2 feet apart. Finally, attach 1/2-inch sheathing to both sides. Keep the bottom of the framing and sheathing about 1/2 to 1 inch off the ground for longer life. Of course you need to use pressure-treated lumber and galvanized or stainless-steel fasteners.

When you attach the faux stone panels, use a good exterior adhesive and caulk all joints. The panels won’t rot, so lay the bottom edge right on the ground. Then top it all off with the faux stone caps.

Faux columns or posts

For extra class, you can add one or more faux stone columns or posts to your wall. Imagine your driveway flanked by two massive stone columns, with a stone wall extending out to each side.

Some columns are designed to fit around wood posts, and others attach to a pad anchored to the ground. Locate each column so the panels and end caps butt against the side of the column. Scribe the last panel to the contour of the column, and then caulk the joint to blend everything together. (The photo shows a column in the middle of a fence, but the idea’s the same.)

And when you finish your wall, be sure to send us photos to add to our gallery!

As we mentioned in our April 2nd post, our faux wood panels were featured on the April 4th episode of ABC’s Extreme Makeover – building a new home for the Beach family

The  Rustic Barn Wood panels were used to create wainscoting in the son’s “Tree Fort Room”. Browse through the Tree Fort room photos and take a peek at the virtual tour of the finished house – you’ll see our faux wood panels, together with Timber Planks from our sister company, Faux Wood Beams, that helped create this fanciful, “Boys Only!” inspired room.

Click on the image to see more
photos of the Tree Fort Room

Click on the image to the take the
Beach Family house tour

Garden walls can be a great addition to your home’s property – whether you want to line the entire perimeter, surround a little sitting area or just add a stand-alone accent.

This wall made with Stacked Stone Tudor faux paneling nicely curves into the natural formation of property’s slope, it almost looks like it just happened to form there by itself.

What’s a garden without a little watering? This photo shows an exterior wall with Random Rock panels in Desert Buff – installed with an added twist. A little water spout/fountain hangs off the wall for a beautiful final touch. For more water design ideas, see our other blog posts “And the Fauxny Award Goes To…” and “Spring Spruce-Up Series: Garden Fountains and Ponds”

These wall fences with Kentucky Gray Drystack offers the homeowners privacy and blends very nicely with the home’s exterior and the surrounding foliage. But with its pleasing coloring it doesn’t say “go away” either.

Whichever style you choose, try adding a garden wall this spring – good walls make for happy homeowners!

Entrance with Nailon Stone in Glacier White

There are two towns in the area where I live that are about six miles away from each other, yet virtually a universe apart when it comes to their building aesthetic. One of them is your classic New England village, with stately old whaling captain houses – lots of white wood and black shutters. The other is well…not. The majority of the town is covered in little summer cottages and restaurants that are every bright color you could imagine, usually in the pink and purple families. We’re not talking understated lavenders and roses here…

Exterior with Glacier White Nailon Stone

So shocking magenta or violet may not be your cup of tea, but the average white wood house isn’t really your bag either. You might want to consider the look of white brick or stone. White looks good with everything, no matter what your landscaping or surrounding areas look like, yet the texture can give your house that little something extra. And what a more perfect time to spiffy up your home’s exterior than spring?

Luckily faux panels are super-easy to clean, and if after awhile you feel like a change, they easily can be painted. You just might want to avoid that can of Pepto-Bismol pink.

Colonial White Nailon Brick