How to Shiplap a Wall without Shiplap

Happy Sunday y’all! I hope everyone has had a great weekend. We have been working on house projects all weekend – per usual! Next weekend, my mom is coming into town for the weekend, and I think we might go up to Magnolia in Waco since she has never been. Of course, I am always down to go to the Chip and Jo Headquarters. 🙂

Speaking of Magnolia, can we talk about shiplap for a second? A few weekends ago, Alex and I were looking at the dining room and decided that we needed to shiplap the wall. Yes, you heard that right, needed to do it. (Alex is probably rolling is eyes right now)

So, first things first, shiplap is not cheap. I am thinking the price jumped due to the recent popularity of the show, Fixer Upper, but who knows.

After a few minutes of searching on Pinterest, we saw that several people came up with a different solution using plywood instead of shiplap. The final results look exactly the same, so we decided to go this route. (You can just search “DIY Shiplap Wall” and you will see a lot of results).

We took a quick trip to Home Depot to get the plywood. We used 1/4″ thick underlayment/plywood and add the Home Depot staff cut it into 6″ sections. The full length of the board was only 8 ft, so we basically had to double everything since we had a 16 ft wall to cover.

Once we had all the boards cut, it was honestly pretty easy. We basically started nailing them to the wall. Luckily, we have an air compressor so we just used a brad nailer. It was super quick getting the wood on the wall. We used nickels as our spacers for the boards, but you could use anything you want to achieve the look you are going for.

Once we had all of the boards nailed to the wall, we had to fill in the gaps in the middle since our wall was 16 ft in length and the boards were only 8 ft. This part was probably the most difficult. We wanted it to look like the board was 16 ft long, so we had to do our best to disguise that gap. We just used wood filler for this part, but that material can be tough to deal with.

After completing the wood filler, we had to wait a solid day to let that dry. Once dry, we had to sand that area down to make sure everything was completely smooth and streamlined. Again, I think this was the hardest part to make sure that we were blending the two boards together without any cracks.

Once the sanding was done, it was time to paint! I used a white color from Sherwin-Williams called: Alabaster. It is a very nice white color. I just used a roller to apply the paint.

After two coats, it was finished! I also had wooden skewers available just in case any paint got in the cracks. I would use a skewer to clean out the paint in those lines.

Below is a supply list just in case you want to try this project yourself.

Supply List:

• 3, 4ft x 8ft, 1/4″ thick underlayment/plywood boards
• 1 gallon SW Alabaster color paint – flat finish
• 1.5″-2″ Nails
• Nickels (for spacing)
• Wooden skewers
• Wood Filler
• Sand Paper
• Rags to wipe off dust
• Paint Rollers

This project can be completed over a weekend if you dedicate most of your time to it. We did it over a couple of weekends since we were also trying to get some other stuff down around the house.

I would definitely do this project again. It was pretty painless overall and the end result looking amazing. I have a few other walls in the house I want to shiplap, so I will keep you posted when I get around to doing those!

Do you think you would attempt a project like this? Do you like the shiplap look?

I can’t wait to share the final dining room soon! I am just putting the finishing touches on it and will post it on my blog in the next week or two!