One of my favorite things in the world is shiplap walls!! I love the look and the impact they make in a space. They are also an inexpensive update you can do yourself to give your room a high end look! We have put shiplap in a few of our rooms and I get asked questions about them all the time, so here is my step by step tutorial on how to shiplap a wall.

Supply List:

Step 1:

The first thing you will want to do is measure your wall to figure out how much plywood you will need to buy. For our wall we used 4 sheets of plywood and ripped (cut) them into 7 3/4″ strips at Home Depot. This size got us the most use out of the sheets of plywood with very little left over scraps. This is the type of plywood we used for our living room wall but there are a variety of types/thicknesses to choose from.

*TIP: If you buy your plywood at Home Depot they will rip your boards for free. If you are at Lowes they charge .25c a cut, and that can add up when doing a project like this!

If the wood you are using is rough you will want to sand the boards before you put them up on your wall. If they are smooth you can skip this step!

Step 2:

Once your boards are relatively smooth it’s time to get them up on your wall. Start by marking your wall studs. Use a stud finder to locate each stud at the top and bottom of the wall. Draw a vertical line down the wall in pencil to mark where each stud runs down the wall. You must nail the wood to the studs – drywall alone is not strong enough. 

Step 3:

For this style of shiplap we wanted the breaks in the horizontal pieces to look random, so you are going to want to cut some of your boards at different lengths. Start working in the top corner and work your way across and down. To get the spacing the same we used a couple nickels and placed then in between each row. Once each board was nailed we removed the nickels and repeated this step all the way down the wall.

*Tip: You are going to want to cut your boards around any vents or switch plates on your wall so that when you put them back on you will have a nice clean look.

Step 4:

Now that your shiplap is all up it’s time to paint! I always recommend getting a satin finish in your paint so that it can be cleaned. If you want a more glossy look you can always go with a semi gloss or gloss. We used a satin finish on our shiplap wall.

That’s it!! Let your paint dry for 24 hours before you put anything back up on your wall and enjoy!

-Grey Birch Designs-