We’ve owned our house for over a year and we’ve finally tackled the diys we wanted to! So today I wanted to share my favorite diy project so far – shiplap in our powder bathroom!
I have wanted to shiplap a wall in our house since we moved in, and we decided a wall in our powder room would be the perfect place to start. It’s a dark room (no windows) and super basic right now. We were going to paint the whole room navy as a statement but we decided to shiplap one wall instead!
let’s get started…
Before you go to the store be sure to measure your wall and do some math for how much plywood you need. Our wall is 5 feet wide so we needed two sheets of plywood. We could have done one sheet – maybe – but then we would have had to patch a lot of small cuts.
Ok so here’s what we got!
what you need
You can get everything you’ll need at Home Depot or Lowe’s!
- Nail gun & 2 inch finishing nails
- plywood – we used plywood underlayment
- Miter saw
- Level
- Spacers – we used one dime between each board! You can use a tile spacer if you want more space
- wood filler
- paint & roller – a quart was enough for us since it was one wall! We picked Sherwin Williams peppercorn.
- Quarter rounds
- Drop cloth for painting
how to do it
We had Lowe’s cut our plywood into 8 inch wide strips. My husband went on a weekday so it was quiet and they did it for free. I know not everywhere will do this, but most should! He had them cut the boards 6″ longer than we needed so we had wiggle room to make the cuts.
We started from the bottom and measured each board before putting it up. Be sure to find the studs BEFORE you start putting boards up – you will want to be sure you nail into them to keep the shiplap up.
So once you’re ready, measure your first board – measure twice, cut once! Then we put it up and nailed with the nail gun. Measure for the next one, put your spacers between, and keep going all the way up.
Once all the boards are nailed up, we filled in all the nail holes with wood filler so we could hide those. We let that dry and then got ready to paint! We rolled on the paint instead of brushing so that it would be smooth and even – no brushstrokes.
***One mistake we made was not painting the quarter-round trim BEFORE we nailed them up. Needless to say, we won’t be making that mistake again. It was so hard to paint the small trim boards on the wall/in the corner. So I would recommend painting the trim, nailing it up, then touching up the paint after.
how long did it take?
My husband was able to get all these boards up and painted in under a day! He hadn’t started when I left for work and everything was up and painted by the time I got home. Add in time for getting the supplies and paint touchups and a weekend should be enough time for a wall this size. Once you get going it’s pretty straightforward!
Gold frame – Target // Rug – Target // White Shelf – Similar // Basket – Similar
overall thoughts
We LOVE LOVE how this turned out and are already thinking about another spot we can do it in! Maybe a guest bedroom wall? It definitely wasn’t as complex as we expected, and the right tools – a nail gun is a MUST, as is a miter saw – made it a speedy project.
Also I should say that we are NOT diy-ers. This is the first project we’ve done in our house and I’m not super adventurous with trying home improvement! My husband was very skeptical if it would turn out and it looks so much better than we thought.
So if you’re interested in adding this look to your house, I say go for it! Happy diy-ing!
