DIY Planked/Shiplap Feature Wall

Good morning, and happy Monday to you!  I'm continuing nursery projects on the blog this week, and chose to start Monday off by sharing the feature wall for this room.  It's posts like this one that make me wish I had some photography skills.  It seems like I couldn't get a clear image of the boards and spaces that shiplap creates, no matter which setting on my camera I used. 

I debated doing a planked wall as a feature wall in this room.  I love the look of shiplap, but it is such a personal taste that I hesitated.  With a wall like this, you are looking at a bazillian nail holes, and I immediately thought, "What if we want to sell, and a buyer doesn't like the look of shiplap?" or "What happens when this look is outdated?"  Taking these boards off of the wall would be a pain.  None the less, I decided that since it was such a small wall, it wouldn't be a big deal and decided to move forward with the project.

To be completely honest, I didn't do any of the work on this wall.  This was all my hubby's labor.

Here's the thing about my husband.  He hates doing these kind of projects.  But do you know how many times he's picked up power tools to help make our house a home?  Too many to count.  And do you know why he does it?  It's not because he loves doing it. It's because he loves me.  And I love him for loving me enough to do something he doesn't love, just because he loves me.  Now that's true love!  Seriously though, if I ask him to help me with a project, he always comes though for me.

When it comes to miter saws and nail guns, he usually does most of the work anyway, but in the past, I've helped along side him.  Not this time.  This time, I did all of the smaller DIY projects, and he tackled all of the walls on his own.

The reason for this is because this was the first full room we've completed since we've had kids.  Let me tell ya what I learned this time around.  Having kids makes everything 10x slower!!!  This wall alone was a stop and start project for weeks. 

If you decide to shiplap a wall...or two...or a whole area of your home, you can find DIY tutorials for shiplap/planked walls all over the internet.  I had no problem doing a google search and finding easy tutorials.  Here are the basic steps for creating a planked accent wall.

Fair warning, the pictures of the process, are not the best.  I wasn't exactly thinking about taking pictures for the blog at the time, so they are just grainy cell phone pictures. I also did not think to take pictures of each step.

Step 1:  For an accent wall this size, go to Home Depot, or another lumber yard, and buy two sheets of 1/4 inch thick plywood underlayment.  Home Depot will cut the boards into six inch strips for you, or you can cut them yourself if you have a table saw.

Step 2: Starting at the top corner of the wall, begin nailing the boards from left to right with a nail gun.  Always nail on the studs.  Use a stud finder to find studs.

Step 3:  As you come to the end of the first row of boards, you will need to measure the space for the last board and cut the board to fit the space using a miter saw.

Step 4.  To begin the next row, use the leftover piece from the last row.  Do this process with all of the following rows.

Step 5:  Using pennies, space all of the rows.  Literally place pennies in between the boards of rows before you secure the boards to the wall.  The space from the pennies is what will make it look like shiplap or a planked wall once you've painted.

Step 6:  Fill all of the nail holes and sand down once dry.

Step 7:  Paint the completed wall white.  It will probably take two coats of paint.

WALLS WITH WINDOWS:  Because we had a window and did not have a table saw, Matt started around the window.  His reason for this was that he would have a clean line to continue to work above the window.  Then as he ended the project, he only needed to take the last few boards back to Home Depot and have them cut it at the appropriate measurement to fit the top row and bottom row.  If he started at the top, he would have only gotten a couple of rows finished before needing to use a table saw to work around the window.

UNEVEN WALLS:  As he finished the last row at the top of the wall, he discovered we had a bit of an uneven wall.  He make the boards fit, but he couldn't fit a penny in between the boards of the top left corner.  It is what it is.  I'm ok with it.  We didn't have a table saw to correct the problem, so we just went with it.  It's a minor flaw, but it's not that noticeable.





Originally, I was just going to do the trim at the top of all four walls and paint the bottom of all four walls pink.  Once I saw my pink paint color against the curtains, I changed my mind and decided I needed a feature wall to balance out all of the pink.  And that's how I came up with doing this wall in Charlotte's room. 

This wall truly is my favorite part of the room.  I'm glad I decided to go with it.  Even though it wasn't part of the original plan.