How To (Faux) Shiplap A Wall

Tell all ya friends and neighbors!

Curious if you could or should DIY a faux shiplap wall? Well, we did and we’re telling you all about it here. Is shiplap just a fad? How much does shiplap really cost? Keep reading!

Oh, shiplap. A word that nobody even knew until Fixer Upper snuck its way into our homes and caused us to dream. Now it’s everywhere. A quick Google or Pinterest search for shiplap or even faux shiplap can give you billionzzzzzz of results. Yes. That’s a real number.

Surprise! It’s even brought tension into our house. Since I’m married to Joanna Gaines (That’s right. Husband is Joanna in this dynamic duo), he wanted it everywhere. Ev.ry.where. The master bedroom. The living room. The floors. The kitchen countertops. My car.

Okay maybe some of those were a bit of an exageration.

Regardless, I told him no. At first I said absolutely none.

Then I told him he could install shiplap in one wall in our kitchen as a shiplap feature wall of sorts. He said he didn’t want to do that wall. (Remember the previous two sentences. They’ll come up later in our story).

So, then he said he wanted to do the two walls by our fireplace to make somewhat of a shiplap accent wall. Since it was a small area, I told him he could do that.

How to Install DIY Faux Shiplap

Supplies:

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• 1/4″ flooring underlayment
• Nickel to use as spacer
• White paint of your choice if you’re going for white shiplap. You could also get wild with it paint it a bold fun color – might I suggest a mauve paint color perhaps?. We went with Sherwin Williams Alabaster. (A comparable Benjamin Moore color is Swiss Coffee!)

Steps:

First, measure your wall. Cut your pieces to the width of the wall you need. We actually had Home Depot rip down the underlayment width wise (we went with 6″ in width) so all we had to do was figure out our length since it was in ginormous strips.

Using the underlayment makes this super easy to install, but it’s thin so it’ll be pretty floppy.

Sand the tops and edges of your shiplap boards. Since this floor underlayment is pretty thin, it can “fray” almost around the edges so make sure you smooth that out as much as you can.

Before you hang your shiplap, you need to paint!

How To Paint A Shiplap Wall

First, paint your wall the color of your shiplap.

I know this doesn’t make sense (it didn’t to me) but if you have a different color wall, it will show through the cracks in between your wood planks and you don’t want that.

After you paint your wall, then you can continue installing your shiplap.

Installing Your Shiplap Wall (continued)

Using a stud finder, mark the wall where your studs are so you know where to nail it in. You can see our lines drawn on the wall here with pencil.

Install your first piece, add nickels in for spacers, and then add your second. Repeat until at the top. For us, we have thick baseboards and 6″ crown molding, so it didn’t matter if ours didn’t go all the way up or to the bottom. If you don’t have crown or baseboard, make sure you measure your wall so that you’re not left with some random sized board OR something not covered by your trim.

Ta da! DIY shiplap wall!

How To Paint A Shiplap Wall (continued)

Now that your shiplap is installed, now it’s time to actually paint said shiplap feature wall!

Fill the nail holes left by your nail gun and let dry.

Sand the filled nail holes and then paint using a foam roller.

You can actually paint the edges with a brush if you desire, but I didn’t do this and quite honestly, you can’t really tell or see the edges.

You could also use a paintbrush to get in between the cracks, just make sure that you go over that with a foam roller so you don’t have brush strokes left in your paint.

Super easy and cheap home improvement project fa sho!

Our shiplap isn’t real shiplap.  It’s what we in the business call DIY faux shiplap. The deal was if he did it, it had to be cheap. So, he did the 2 small walls beside the fireplace and the wall in the kitchen for under $40 by using floor underlayment.

He also did this way before we had the idea of doing a blog, so it was never in the plan for these pictures to be made public, but we’re here and that’s just how it is. Let’s look at them,  judge them, and move on.

Should I Install DIY faux shiplap?

Sure it’s a great focal point, but for me, I have the fear of it being like the 80s wood paneling and is just a fad that will go away soon, but look at it this way – If you style your house based on what you think will be popular or not in 10, 15 years, you’ll never do anything.

So, you have to do YOU, boo boo. I mean let’s be real. Flare leg jeans have come back TWICE now. And I liked them the second time around and hate them now.

Do you want shiplap in your own house?

If you want faux shiplap everywhere, put it everywhere. If you want tongue and groove everywhere, put it everywhere, If you want shiplap nowhere, then fight with your husband and compromise and put it somewhere.

We did the latter.

What does your house look like from the outside?

Does your home from the outside feel like it should have shiplap somewhere/everywhere? To me, our whole house looks shiplapped because of the hardie board siding which just made me want to do it less, but made Jordan want to do it more I guess. People are different and marriage can be hard.

Related: Read ways to love your fixer upper while it’s being fixed and upped!

Here’s what we ended up with:

We compromised and put it beside our fireplace and … Where else? Oh yeah. That wall he said he didn’t want to put shiplap on a couple paragraphs ago.

So, the moral of the story is yes shiplap is a trend. Trends come and go. If it fits your style and your house and doesn’t feel wonky or out of place, go for it! Heck, even if it DOES feel out of place, if it’s something you want, just friggin’ do it. Stop reading what I gotta say about it. Get busy! (But also thanks for reading what I gotta say about it!)

Happy shiplapping! Or not. Seriously. It’s whatever.

Disclaimer: This post is not sponsored by, written by, or even known about by Joanna Gaines. Let’s just leave baby JoJo out of this. She’s got, like, a lot of kids and doesn’t need the stress of me added to her plate.