DIY Shiplap Wall

The husband is working late, the kids are off to bed, so there are no excuses to NOT put this tutorial up! Although I will admit, my bed, gourmet hot chocolate, and tv is calling my name! 

Its been ONE. OF. THOSE. DAYS !!

I have wanted to do a shiplap or planked wall FOR-EV-ER!!! The hubs wasn't sold on the idea since we had just built and "we paid good money to paint these walls just to cover them up" haha! Bless his heart! I finally convinced him! We bought our supplies and I was so excited to get some walls done. Then life happened, you all know Mr Life. He likes to come in and ruin your plans from time to time. Needless to say it didn't happen and got put on the back burner.  Then we had this crazy idea to sell our new house and pay off our old house, that we had been renting out, and move back. Yep! There goes Mr Life once again! 

The good news about living in an older home is there are A LOT of updates and remodeling that can (ahem... NEED) to be done. Right up my alley! AND the hubs is not attached to the newly painted walls lol! It didn't take long for him to say.... "get ready we are planking the walls!" I was thrilled and a little surprised! We have a few bigger remodeling things that need to get done before we can do a lot of the cosmetic things. Those bigger items will take a little time, which is hard for me, because I am a little impatient and want it all done, like yesterday! Anyone else like that??? So to plank the walls was what my heart needed to hear! 

Isn't this room so lovely! I hope you sense the sarcasm there. It is so dark in there! It doesn't help that there is NO LIGHT in that room!? Who does that?? That is on our to do list. About 8 yrs ago it was painted in brown tones, which I loved then, but now...... its too dark and we need to lighten it up and add some design!

I forgot to take pics of the boards we used, BUT we used floor underlayment for our planks. It is about 1/4 in thick which was perfect! I didn't want it to hang over the edge or be flush with our baseboards which were 1/2 in. Plus with it being so thin, it doesn't take much to attach it to the wall. A lot of tutorials used thin plywood and a lot seemed to have problems with boards warping and we didn't want that!

The underlayment boards came in 4x8 foot boards. We used about 6-7 boards total for all 4 walls. We got it at Lowe and had them cut it in 6 in strips. We had a 5 in plank left over from each board, we used those on the bottom and our baseboards covered up that 1 inch difference. Now one thing to note is that you have to make it really clear that you want someone who knows what they are doing and that you want the cuts as straight as possible! The first set of boards we had cut had wavy cuts which was a pain when hanging. I made sure to stress those 2 points on the next set of boards and they were cut straight. ALSO the underlayment at Home Depot is cheaper and I believe better quality, HOWEVER our Home Depot would NOT cut anything smaller then 12 inches and we don't have a table saw to cut our own, yet.... ;)  so we had to go to Lowes. 

We lightly sanded all the edges of each plank as well as the side that would be facing out, so that they were smooth. After that we were ready to start! The first thing you want to do is decide how you want your planks to be arranged, staggered  or not. I wanted our planks to look like one continual board across and not staggered. I wanted a more authentic look, as well as it looking more simple/classic and clean lined. Don't get me wrong I LOVE the staggered look, but this seemed to fit my style better. If you want a staggered look there are several ways to do that. Google is very helpful when deciding how to stagger your planks. 

Now we are at the point where the hubs comes in, leaving me to supervise ;) He checked for studs (for some reason I could only find one in the room *wink *wink ;) ) and then using his level, drew vertical lines down the wall to mark where the studs were so he knew where to nail.

Now comes the part of deciding your spacing. Really, that is a personal preference! Most everything I read and saw seemed to be about 1/8 of an inch spacing. You can use nickels as your spacers or eyeball it. Remember when I said the guy cut our boards all wavy? Well now is when that little oops comes into play. When we spaced our planks with a nickel, there were several spots that the boards touched and I didn't want that. But I also didn't want wider spacing either. The hubs and I had different ideas on the spacing so this took up a good 30-45 mins trying to decide (he wanted a wider spacing and I wanted as thin as possible). We finally agreed on using a cardboard box cut into strips which was a compromise to both of our spacing desires lol! It actually worked really well! And I love how it looked after it was painted.  I forgot to take a pic of that during the process, so here is one after the fact, but you get the idea!

We decided to hang our planks, starting at the top. The reason is because we were putting in new baseboards so if there was less then 5 inches left, our baseboards could cover it and we wouldn't have to cut the boards down smaller. If there was more then 5-6 inches then we would have a couple inches left on the bottom and again, our baseboards could cover it. Even if we were not putting up new baseboards, I would rather have any smaller boards at the bottom then at the top where it would be less noticeable. 

To hang the planks we simply used our finishing nail gun and nailed 2 nails on each board where the studs were and then at each end. We used 1 1/4 inch nails for that. Again because our planks were so thin, a few nails held the planks beautifully!  To make sure that the planks were level, we used the level on the first board and then every other board or so after that. You could probably just do every couple boards. You just want to make sure that it is level so you don't have a leaning wall :)

The process of hanging the boards went rather quickly and we got in a good groove! We ran out of boards and had to get more so that dragged the process out. If we had all the boards we needed, or it wasn't 10pm at night so we couldn't get more right away, hanging the planks would have easily been an after work or Sat project.

You will want to have a jig saw handy so that you can cut around where your outlets are. We made sure to cut just around the hole in the wall so that our outlet covers would cover the boards. I know our outlets look like a hot mess, thank goodness we replaced them to a nice bright white with no paint on them ;) 

I am loving how it is coming along! I even love it unpainted! The final look is getting so close! For the corners (eek I don't have a pic for that! What was I thinking!?) We lined the boards up on the main walls, where we didn't want to see where the boards connected, with an overhang. On the opposite wall from the main wall, we held a scrap piece up in place so that when we did the overhang and the board on the adjoining wall would match up flush. I hope that makes sense. Hopefully you can kinda see that in the pics below. 

Once you have all your planks hung, you will want to putty all your nail holes. Also if you remember, I wanted my planks to look like one solid plank. There was only one wall that was longer then the planks, as you can see in the above pic. I used Bondo to fill those seams. I also used some to fill the nail holes and after the fact I would recommend sticking with wood putty for the nail holes. You need to get the spots with Bondo really smooth so you don't see the spots after it is painted and it took more effort to smooth the little nail holes with Bondo then wood putty. 

You are in the final stretch now! To add the finishing touch, I calked the seams of all the walls. That really made a difference and took no time at all. You can also add trim to all your edges. We opted not to, however, I would like to add some at the top where the wall meets the ceiling, but that is a project for another day ;)  

After that, all that was left to do was PAINT! I used my Home Right Finish Max sprayer to paint my shiplaped walls.  It made painting all 4 walls a breeze. If you choose to use a paint sprayer, make sure to tape off about 3 feet around where you are spraying. Look how easy it is to spray! I have used a paint sprayer when I do furniture for the last 6+ yrs but using it to paint your walls take it to a whole other level, a level that I LOVE!

We used Sherwin Williams Cotton White for our newly Shiplaped wall.  It was our trim color in our other house and I loved it! It was the perfect soft white that went with about any color. Since we decided to stick with it for our trip in our new house it was perfect to use on our walls as well. That way we knew the colors would go well! As a bonus, I didn't have to worry if a little paint got on the trim cause it was the same color! 

So what do you think? BIG difference right!? It is amazing how much it changed the look of our sitting room! Every time I walk in the door, I can't help but smile! And look at those "one long plank" rows! Ahhhhh it makes me so happy!

We still have a few things to do in this room to be able to say it is completely done, like painting the piano, but this was a BIG start! So what do you think? Pretty easy right!? Will you shiplap a wall in your home? 

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