Rustic Shiplap

Okay folks! So we've both been wanting to do some shiplap in our respective homes for quite a while now and now that Sarah has a break before school starts, we decided to do our first shiplap wall! So I decided to do a wall by my laundry room as a practice wall since it is tucked away and if it for some reason didn't work out, no one would really see it. Now we say RUSTIC shiplap for a reason LOL! There are a lot of different wood options you can use when doing shiplap and we planned on using plywood, however while at Lowe's we saw these fencing posts for less than $2 a piece so we decided to give it a try! These pieces looked even and straight, but when we started putting them on the wall, we found this was definitely not the case. Because of this, there are gaps and it is not uniformly flat on the wall which made it a little more difficult to get the shiplap to stay.

First thing you'll need to do is measure your space so you know how much wood to buy and then measure your wood to the correct measurement. These fencing posts were not only cheap, they were already cut into 6 in strips so I didn't need to cut them myself or have them cut at Lowes, which they will do for free in the store (though sometimes finding someone who is happy to help you can be tricky).

I used a chop saw that my sweet husband got me for Christmas to cut my strips down to size. You could use a table saw or skill saw or if you don't have any of these options, you can maybe see if they will cut it all at Lowes at the time of purchase, or find a friend who has a saw you could use.

Your next step will be to sand the side that will be facing out. Make sure it is smooth to the touch so that if you brush up against it, you have no risk of slivers! I used a circular power sander which I would highly recommend as it will save your arm a lot of work! That's what she said. Lol sorry, it was too easy. That's what she said! Okay, okay last one I promise! Next step is to paint your boards the color of your choice. We went with classic white. You only need to paint the side that will be facing out, however we found as we put them up that it would have been useful to paint the small top and bottom edges as well because the wood was uneven and didn't lay perfectly flat to hide the edges.

Now here you have a few options. I use liquid nails for a lot of things, so I figured this would be no different. However because these boards were not as flat as they seemed, the liquid nails just weren't cutting it. Make sure you have several finishing nails handy to help hold them in place as the liquid nails set. Put a good amount of liquid nails on your board and place where you want your board. Don't forget to space your boards apart to get that shiplap look. You can use coins to make the small gap or in our case, because we couldn't find any pennies, we used small nails to separate the boards. Once in place make sure you hold in place to give the liquid nails a chance to adhere to the wall. Use finishing nails to help this process.

Now using these fencing boards definitely will not give you the smoothest look but will give you a good rustic and in our opinion authentic look! To complete the look I painted the top fourth of the wall with chalk board paint to add another awesome element to the wall!

So there you go! Rustic shiplap and it's awesome! I'm going to do another blog post about using plywood instead to get that smoother look.