Faux Window With Your Favourite View

This Instructable is about how I made a faux window with a nice view. It's a picture frame with a twist. It would be great if you were living in an apartment with no view, or on a large wall in your home. It's a great way to remember a favourite place that you have visited, or as inspiration for a place you have always wanted to go. The added feature of being able to open and close the window shutters adds to the illusion that the view is right outside. Be sure to comment below to let me know what you think or what you would change if you were doing it. Thanks.

Look at the video above.

Materials:

I chose to build it to suit a 1000mm x 700mm print or poster but you can adapt to whatever size you want.

All of the wood used is standard store bought planed timber. I used a combination of 45mm 70mm 100mm and 125mm wide boards. The thickness of the boards was 18mm.Where I am from in Ireland the wood is called white deal with the exception of the cornice which is red deal.

In the second and third pics I added a rough guide as to the measurements of my finished window.

Glue and nails

Wooden plugs to fill screw holes

6 Hinges

Sandpaper

Primer & undercoat

Finish coat (gloss white)

Tools:

Chop saw (hand saw and square will do just fine also)

Table saw (for cutting the French cleat but you could come up with another way to hang it)

Air nailer (A hammer will work just as well)

Measuring tape

Pocket screw jig set (mortice & tenon, dowels, lap joints could be done instead)

Screwdriver

Jig saw (a coping saw will do the job aswell)

Electric sander &

Paint brush

To start I cut 2 pieces of 70mm x 18mm for the sides of the frame; 45mm x 18mm for the bottom and 125mm x 18mm for the top. The top is wider so we can have a place to fix the cornice to at a later stage. I chose to use pocket screws to hold the frame together at the joints. They are an easy, fast and strong joint and are well suited for a project like this. You could also use dowels or lap joints here but it would be more time consuming. I used 2 screws and glue on the bottom and 3 screws and glue on the wider top joints.

Rather than using wider pieces of wood for the frame and then rebating it to hold the pic and backing board I decided to join two pieces of the 18 mm wood. The back piece is approx 12 mm narrower than the front piece and this then forms the rebate. All pieces were joined with glue and nails.

There are a few ways the faux window could be hung or fixed to a wall but I went with a French cleat. It's an easy fixing to create and because of its shape it ensures the window will be pulled tight to the wall. its simply a piece of wood cut at 45 degrees along its length. I used a table saw to cut it but you could use a circular saw or even cut it with a hand saw. I fixed the top half of the cleat with glue and nails. More info on french cleats

To make the window more decorative I added a cornice molding to the top. This was a standard store bought one. I mitered the corners at 45 degrees and then glued and pinned it on.

To create the illusion of a window board on the bottom I simply used a piece of 100 mm x 18 mm wood. I allowed a 50 mm overhang on each end. On the two external corners at the front I rounded the corners using a jig saw. To attach it to the frame I simply glued and screwed it.

The doors are simply made up from 45mm x 18mm wood (side, top & bottom rails) and the centre rails are 18 mm x 18 mm. Again I used pocket screws to make the joints for the doors. There are two screws in each corner with glue, and one screw and glue on each of the centre rails. The doors were made to overhang the frame. When the doors are open the pocket screw holes would have been visible, so I plugged them with Kreg wood plugs.

After filling all the nail holes I sanded the frame and doors. I used my belt sander to sand the wood plugs on the door and then used a palm sander to smooth out the rest. I applied a coat of a water based undercoat and primer. When that was dry I gave the whole thing a light sanding. I then applied two coats of a water base gloss white paint.

There are many types of hinges you could use here to attach the doors but I went with face mounted overlay cabinet hinges. The ones I used had a satin nickel finish. These are simple to fix to the door and frame using screws. I used 3 hinges on each door.

The finished faux window! The first picture shows the finished window with a 6 mm plywood backing board in place. You could go to the extreme and with a few adjustments add glass to the doors for a more realistic look but I feel it did not need it and it also would have added to the weight.

I photo shopped in a couple of my own images in to give a few examples of the finished piece in the open and closed positions.

Are you going to give it a try? Let me know in the comments and thank you for looking.

If you would like to see more projects from me you can subscribe to my YouTube channel here: Eamon Walsh DIY on Youtube