3 Ways to Upcycle Corrugated Metal

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The Hale’s homesteaded Norton County in the late 1800’s where corrugated metal was used to cover the sides and roofs of their outbuildings and barns. This has been my main source of this rusty treasure for a couple recent projects. I feel like I’m taking a part of the family history and integrating it into my own story. The beauty of using the oldest rustiest of these panels is that you can make all kinds of mistakes with cuts and alignment and still have a nice looking project…..within reason.

The use of weathered corrugated metal can be integrated into accent walls, furniture, and about anything you’d like to add character and vintage style to. It’s amazing how the most weathered, tattered, and rusted corrugated metal can take a project from bland to authentic vintage when used in the right way. There are techniques used on new corrugated by spraying it with bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and other chemicals to get that age old look so desirable these days. But this isn’t an article about that! This is about using the real stuff strewn about the country side with the coolest looking rust patterns all caused by years exposed to the elements. With a little time, countryside networking, and some basic tools you can likely acquire your own authentic corrugated with just the right amount of character for that next project.

Accent Wall

In the summer of 2019, we set out on a journey to take what we believe was an old grainery in our back yard and breath new life into it. This 12 x 20 wood frame building would have had shutter doors to be opened up for a grain or feed wagon where the contents would be shoveled inside.. The new purpose for this building is to become a functional studio for projects, gatherings, and work. We wanted to use a balanced integration of old and new materials to give the right feeling. Had I been thinking ahead and planned to work with corrugated metal, I would have framed the accent wall differently to allow for the 26” seams to be lined up for a nice tight fit. Instead, I used gray sheet metal screws to simply fasten the seams together unsupported on the back side. It looks fine but don’t lean against them too hard. Somehow when we put the panels up, the rust patterns accidentally but perfectly staggered for the ideal look. Look closely on some of the panels and you may find bullet holes from a shootout from the wild west or maybe just some ornery teenagers having target practice.

Rolling Bar

With plenty of corrugated metal in store, I wanted to keep the rust train rolling and I decided to make an indoor/outdoor rolling bar. This project would include a counter top from the Pure Prairie, a local natural food store, which was once the bar top that Jim Rowh built for serving counter. I also wanted it to have a refrigerator to keep beverages cold. It had to be a rolling cart with casters in order to get it into the studio and then onto the outdoor paver patio easily. Corrugated metal would then shroud the whole structure to allow it to blend into the accent wall when parked inside and then match the pony wall built onto the pergola. What rolling bar would be complete without lights?! There are so many lighting solutions available these days, under counter puck lights from Amazon was a good fit to light it up at night like a flying saucer. I recommend going with either 2700K or 3000K color temperature. Anything higher than that reminds me of being in a school cafeteria or the DMV. 5700k to 6500k is the light you see in a room just before a serial killer attacks his next victim. Avoid that! The back bar area is spaced just tall enough to store pint sized glasses. I had some old cabinet fronts laying around so I decided to make a pull out drawer which proved to a real challenge to build at the right size for it to perfectly slide in and out. I purchased 20” drawer slides and installed my first drawer ever which slides like a dream. The refrigerator is an Antarctic 85 can clear glass front with a cool purple/black light which goes down to 39 degrees. It seems cold enough to keep your favorite beverage frosty and it doesn’t perform too bad for a $200 fridge. This was a fun project and was inexpensive until I started adding lights, drawers, and a fridge.

Privacy Wall

Every deck and patio is different in how you create the intimacy and privacy of that space. As we designed and built our paver patio in the backyard which extended off the newly renovated studio, there were a couple factors we hadn’t considered. The position of the sun in the late afternoon and early afternoon during the summer was at it’s hottest and brightest on the patio which made dinner time miserable. What now?! The next logical step was to build a pergola. So…the summer of 2020 included building a pergola to help shade the space from the sun and create a feeling of being in a room but being in the open. Acquiring affordable lumber during COVID presented it’s own problems but that’s for a different post. It wasn’t enough to just build a pergola because we still had a 7 ft open wall on the west end of the patio which would let in a good amount of direct sunlight. We decided to build a pony wall out of corrugated metal with a louvered sunshade. We wanted to leave a 4 ft space open at one end of the wall open as a way of entering the patio but also wanted the option to roll down a sunshade. We found the Coolaroo 4’ x 8’ walnut colored sunshade to create shade but have the flexibility to roll up.

We decided to build 2 separate pony wall panels due to the width of the 26” pieces of metal. Building it in 2 sections allowed me to use 4 pieces of metal in total with 2 pieces in each section. I fastened the the pieces together in the middle with a small machine screw with a nut. These 2 sections of corrugated metal, two 4x4’s, plus the roll down shade provided a wall of shade at just the right time of day and created more privacy from the street. I’m still amazed the math worked out the way it did on the spacing. Oh yeah…1/2 of the time building this thing was spent measuring 6 times and cutting 2-3 times.

Make sure you have a good metal cutting blade for your circular saw or have some very sharp tin snips. Hearing, eye, and skin projection is recommended for these projects as the metal edges are sharp and may cause injury.

I still have some sheets of corrugated metal to use on other projects in the future. What other interesting projects have you considered using corrugated metal on to bring character into your indoor and outdoor spaces?