DIY Faux Shiplap Wall

How to build a DIY faux shiplap wall with this full tutorial using tongue-in-groove planks.

Shiplap! Shiplap! Shiplap! Shiplap! This will make that reference make way more sense:

Y’all, I’m not even kidding you. There are days I think I should just put Robert on camera because he and Chip Gaines act like brothers separated at birth. (And the type where you think, “Thank goodness these two guys most likely will never be in the same room because the world might implode from all the hilarious shenanigans.”)

But maybe every Fixer Upper crazed wife thinks that about her hubs at some point. Every time we watch a show, Robert’s typical comment about Chip is, “Man, this dude is my hero.”

Last weekend, Robert was my hero though because he gave me…wait for it…shiplap! (You already knew that from the title of this post, but just pretend you were surprised, kay?)

I showed y’all last week the ideas I had brewing in my head for our quickie foyer makeover we’re currently working on.

Here’s how our foyer was looking a week ago:

It was okay. But that’s just it…okay. There is no natural light in our foyer, so white shiplap is the perfect solution to brighten up the space and provide that farmhouse-y character we’re always after. We went for the easy over cheaper solution this time around (Gasp! I know, right?).

We really didn’t feel like ripping plywood into strips and balancing coins between boards, and we thought this would be a much quicker project. Heh…nope. We maybe shaved off an hour’s time, but shiplap walls are no joke time-consuming.

Here’s what we used:

(Affiliate links are provided below, noted with asterisks. I only recommend brands I trust that I would use in my own home. For more information, see my disclosure.)

• 7 packs of v-groove wood planks (They come 6 planks to a pack.)
• Pneumatic nail gun* and nails
• Table saw* (Other types of saws can work too since you’re just cutting a straight line.)
• Spackling patch*
• White trim caulk*
• Primer/paint of your choice

Lola has to supervise, as usual.

Altogether, the wood, paint, spackling, and caulk cost about $140. We could have saved about $30 if we’d bought plywood to cut into strips, but the v-groove planks saved a lot of headache from the other bajillion shiplap tutorials I’ve read out there.

Once we moved our foyer table out of the way (which is due for a makeover session), this is what we were working with.

And this…

99% of our projects are fueled by substantial amounts of coffee…and a little turtle power.

Robert and Olivia both have been on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kick lately and it’s pretty much the cutest thing ever watching them “ninja” in the living room.

The Steps:

We measured our 10 ft wall first knowing that our 8 ft boards would be 2 feet too short. So we cut and alternated as we worked our way up the wall.

We started at the bottom of the wall first above our baseboard, but you could start at the top if you preferred.

Thankfully, we only have one outlet, but it was tricky. I held up one board while Robert traced the outlet to cut out with the jigsaw before nailing to the wall.

You can opt to put in an outlet extender to push the cover over top of the wood planks, but we faired fine without one.

We continued to alternate wood plank sizes using 8 ft and 2 ft planks, each with a little wiggle room since our wall wasn’t totally square. Some of our planks were off from our 2 ft mark by a few inches so we made sure to measure before doing any cuts on our saw.

You can get a better idea of our plank sizes here before Robert put in a 2 ft plank.

After a few hours, okay more like a day, our shiplap was up! At the very top, we added a strip of quarter round molding to fill in the gap and make the wall look finished.

We used caulk on all of the edges of the wall and spackling in the nail holes.

I smoothed out the spackling with a putty knife and sanded down any rough spots once it was dry.

Then paint. It took 2 coats of paint/primer in one. I used the color Sherwin Williams Pure White mixed into Valspar this time around. I ended up using less than half a gallon.

My photography was less than stellar on this. After 3 days of nailing, cutting, caulking, and painting, I was ready to be done! But I’m so excited how it turned out. And I’m sort of bummed that you can hardly see the pretty definition in these pictures. This foyer is tricky to photograph.

Already though, this space has brightened up so much! I can’t wait to start loading in all of the decor. Now that this hard part is over, the real fun can begin.

You’ll be seeing more of this space in the next week or two as we finish it up.

Are you a fan so far? Do you go bonkers crazy over some shiplap too? Do you have some anywhere in your house? Or gasp! Even the real kind? I’ll be a teensy bit jealous if you do.

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