Bamboo Brigade - Room Divider / Wall decoration

Bamboo Room Divider / Wall decoration - Before

Bamboo Room Divider / Wall decoration - After

Quite an exciting project, but just as time consuming and laborious too. The need was to make a bamboo unit to fill up a non-intrusive wall space.This is something that my friend saw at a showroom and wanted us replicating it. Since we were already working with bamboos on a different project, we jumped at the opportunity after browsing through some images on the net.

Bamboo as a raw material is readily available, inexpensive and is easy to use These bamboos are less than an inch in diameter. The hardest part of the project was to sand the bamboo stems to remove the waxy outer coating and to achieve a smoother surface. The slowest part of the project was the time it took for the oil paint (green) to dry. Once dried, it was varnished.  A hole was drilled in each of the nodes in the bamboo for a leaf to be inserted. The bamboos were made to stand by screwing them onto a wooden plank.

The base is a regular black box made from 19mm plywood planks. The planks were joined together using 2 inch screws. No other fancy joining technique used. The insides were painted black while the exterior was covered with black laminate. The box was stuffed with thermocol after placing the bamboos in place and finally covered with pebbles. Only thing missing is the bamboo leaves.

We delivered in late in the night yesterday and so, we are yet to get a full fledged feedback. We are sure some changes here and there would be required. Will follow up. And considering we have been onto this for the last 45 days, we are gonna take a well deserved two weeks break from woodworking :)... So,here it is - a bamboo room divider.

P.S. Do you know where we can find artificial bamboo leaves in Chennai ? Would appreciate any pointers in this regard.

- Somu