It's Week 2 of the Better Homes and Gardens One Room Challenge. There is a lot of amazing work being done by everyone! This week has been all about the shiplap and bookcase wall for me. I've been wanting to install shiplap for a long time, (aka since before Instagram was invented), so this was a dream project for me.
My current design obsession is vertical shiplap. I have a whole folder saved on Instagram dedicated to all these old english country homes and rooms with the beaded wood paneling. I actually haven't found anywhere that sells it here. But there are so many other options for a more basic shiplap, starting from ripping down a sheet of 1/4" luaun plywood or 1/2" MDF, to actual shiplap boards, and v-groove interlocking paneling. I think I will definitely try some of these other options in the future.
I decided to go with actual shiplap boards and followed a really amazing tutorial from Michelle at Blushing Boho. One of her best pointers, to me, was the tip about using 1/4" plywood strips to create a backer board to tie your planks back to the wall studs. If the shiplap were being installed horizontally they would naturally tie back into the studs because they would run perpendicular, but since they are running parallel with the studs only about 1-in-4 boards would. So the plywood strips behind the paneling makes it more secure.
I will only add a few extra steps I did for install. One is adding trim to cover seams. I planned in advance to add crown and baseboard molding to the shiplap wall. So I cut each board about 1/2" shorter than the height of the wall, for ease of install, and butted it up against the ceiling. Also I don't have a table saw, so I ripped my last board down with a circular saw, and lets just say it's not the prettiest edge, but I plan to use lattice trim to cover both ends of the wall.
For cutting around the one outlet on the wall, it fell almost perfectly between two boards. Since I don't have a jigsaw yet, I used my miter saw to cut small lines into the board, knocked the 'teeth' out with a mallet, and used a handheld hacksaw to cut it down a bit more. Had it been in the middle of the board, I would have used a 1" or so hole drill bit to start a hole in the board, and then a maybe a small handsaw to cut out the opening. I add this to say, you don't necessarily have to have all of the woodworking tools to do a project. There are inexpensive manual options that will get the job done. I used a miter saw and circular saw to install this wall.
The second tip I will add is, if using a darker color, to paint the shiplap or at least the grooves before install. It isn't some thing that I did because I painted my shiplap white, but I feel like if I were going with darker color, I would have wanted to paint those grooves before install. As a whole the shiplap is everything I imagined it would be! It adds such an amazing texture to an otherwise neutral wall space and is a beautiful backdrop to whatever is placed in front of it.
As I mentioned last week, I am hacking my old Target bookcases to make them into built-ins. I was able to get a good start, getting them painted and secured to the wall along with the height extending bookcase I built to make them taller.
Beautiful!
ReplyDeleteThank-you!
Delete