It wasn’t a difficult install, but these Nouveaus made this space sing.

Adding Nouveau™ wood diffusers to a home theater is not as daunting a task as it may seem, and can be done with a little planning and a few tools.  This install used an ingenious mounting method to ease the final install.  Instead of mounting the z-track to the wall directly, it was mounted to sheets of plywood which were hung with Gorilla/Hercules hooks.

The first task was to pick a stain. You can use the back of a plank to get an idea of how the poplar will respond to the different options.  Poplar has a very interesting and varied structure that will take stain differently than some other woods. Darker stains may be more consistent, but don’t reveal the character and variation in the wood.  This install chose a Smoke Gray which grayed out soft areas and browned the harder heart wood. A semi-gloss clear coat was used to finish.

Using the back of the Nouveau™, you can see how the stains will “take.”

While the stain dried, the mounting plywood was cut down to hide behind the planks. Four hanging straps with eye-loops were then added to the top edge of each of the plywood sections, and spaced to avoid studs.

Industrial hanging eyelets were added to the top edge of the sheets to make them easy to level and hang with the Gorilla Hooks.

The Z-track that would normally be installed on the wall was installed on the opposite side of the plywood.  This will make it easy to hang the Nouveaus onto the sheet after it’s on the wall.

Z-Bar track was added to the top and bottom of the plywood sheet to accept the z-bars that are going on the back of the finished Nouveau™ planks.

After the Nouveau™ planks are finished with the staining, and left to cure for a few days, they are ready to have the mating Z-bars attached to the back.  They are installed with the same spacing as the Z-tracks on the plywood sheets.  This will make it easy to align them after the plywood is hung on the wall.

The z-bars are measured, marked, and installed at the same spacing as the z-tracks on the plywood.

The Gorilla/Hercules Anchor hooks are rated to around 50-60 lbs each. The Nouveau™ planks are roughly 25lbs each (at 48 inches) and each section has 4 hooks supporting 4 planks plus the weight of the 3/8″ plywood.  The hooks are installed so that the plywood will hang level – with the weight distributed evenly across all four hooks.

When installed properly and leveled, each of these hooks will hold up to about 50-60lbs each. In this configuration, they should only need to support about half that.

Finally, the Nouveau™ planks are installed into the Z-Tracks on the plywood, and moved into position.  Because the z-bars were installed square and level, there is no shifting, and they hang true.  The undersized plywood sections disappear behind the planks leaving the impression that the planks are floating slightly off the wall.

The install doesn’t look much different from a direct mount z-track installation, with a small gap against the wall.

While this mounting method may not be ideal for every scenario, this was an effective way to install 8 Nouveau™ planks with only 8 small hook holes in the wall.  These can now be installed in apartments or temporary environments with minimal damage to the existing walls – and once you are done, they’re easy to take down and reinstall somewhere else. You just need a level!