{You Had Me at Shiplap}

I admit, I did not jump on board the Fixer Upper train right at first.  When the show first premiered in 2014, I was in the process of building my current house & living back at home with my parents.  In fact, I don't even think I watched season 1 the first time around.  

Fast forward 6 months & it was time for season 2.  This time I was finally settled in my new house & my tv pretty much stayed on HGTV 24/7.   I needed decorating ideas, duh! =)  After watching a few episodes of Fixer Upper, I fell in love with the farmhouse look.  Joanna Gaines had me a shiplap.  

And I knew right then & there that I needed some shiplap in my life.   

Fast forward a year & still no shiplap.  Insert sad face here.  My Instagram news feed was full of all the shiplap goodness & yet I still had none.  One of the big factors was cost & after the whole Blue Bell debacle of 2015, there was very little money left in the budget for "unnecessary" projects such as this.  

And then I started to hear about "faux shiplap".  After checking out Pinterest & reading a few blogs, I knew this was something even my DIY challenged-self could do {with the help of a few friends of course}.  My first thought was that I would start small & do an accent wall in my guestroom...but quickly decided to "go big or go home".  I wanted to be able to see it & enjoy it every day so I decided on the large wall in my master bedroom.

I headed to Home Depot & purchased 5 - 4'x8' sheets of underlayment for $11.97 each.  The underlayment works great because it's very thin & light weight...making it easy to work with & it matched up perfectly depth-wise with my current baseboards.  Home Depot agreed to cut them down into 6" strips for me for an extra $10 charge.  A lot of the blogs I read said their Home Depot or Lowes cut them down free of charge...my store in particular was not very willing to do it at all, let alone free of charge.  The pieces were far from exact, but it certainly helped me out & saved me a ton of time.  The day I went to pick them up was the day of the great flood of 2016 {you can read about it here} so I had to go with plan b.  For the record, 5 sheets of 8' underlayment will fit in the back of a Yukon. =)

Over the course of the next 2 days, I sanded {by hand} & primed all 40 - 6" x 8' strips.  The edges were fairly rough, but after board 20 or 21, I decided those rough edges gave the boards "character".  Even though it was time consuming for me, I was so glad I had all the prep work done before installation day because it saved us a ton of time then.

I was off work on Memorial Day so that's the day a friend & I decided to tackle the project.  She came over & we drew out where we wanted the seams to be, what cuts we needed to make, etc.  My wall was just shy of 16' so technically - 2 planks would have fit almost perfectly. But, all of the seams are part of the character of shiplap so we had to make a few cuts & adjustments.

Next we marked all of the studs & drew a vertical line down the wall so we would know where to nail them. {and I am REALLY sorry for the terrible pictures, but my bedroom has 1 window so it gets very little natural light...making picture taking a nightmare!}

My friend's brother stopped by to dropped off a saw & nail gun, and well....we kinda, sorta recruited him to help.  Carol made the cuts and Jon & I nailed the boards.  The first row took the longest because we had to make sure our cuts were correct & our boards were level.  

After that, things went REALLY fast.  We used nickels for spacers as suggested & they worked perfect.  There were times when seams didn't line up perfectly or a cut was 1/4" off, but surprisingly - I didn't freak out too much!  =) I am normally a perfectionist when it comes to things like that, but again - all of that adds to the character of real shiplap.  

 

 

Thankfully the only precise cuts we had to make were around 2 outlets & a phone jack {which I didn't even realize I had...who has a house phone these days?!} and we used a Dremel for that.

Can we just take a moment & admire it?  Isn't she beautiful?!  

 

 

Ok, so the after isn't so great, but this was right after we finished & all I wanted to do was sit on the floor & admire our hard work.   

I can't believe I waited so long to do it.  It completely changed the look of the room for not a lot of money or time.  My bill at Home Depot was right at $75.  Thankfully I had the primer & white paint at home so that didn't cost me anything.  I did buy my helpers lunch {and margaritas that night} so in the end - maybe around $100 - $125 overall?  I spent a few hours doing prep work & start to finish on install day took about 4 hours. 

At first, I kinda liked the look of just the primed boards & thought maybe I didn't need to paint them {it could have just been that I was delusional from all the sanding & priming}.  I liked it, but didn't love it.  I lived with it like that for about 2 weeks & ultimately decided to paint them white.  At 9 o'clock on a work night.  Cause that's how I roll. I did leave the seams & nails exposed because I loved the rustic look {and it saved me a ton of time}.  In the end, the boards got 2 coats of primer & 2 coats of paint.  

And now?  Now it's perfect & I am absolutely in love.  Because we had very little waste, I have almost an entire sheet of cut & primed shiplap sitting in my garage just begging to be hung on a wall.  I am thinking maybe the island in my kitchen next?!

Unfortunately you don't get to see the "final" after just yet. After getting the shiplap up & painted {& making my trip to Magnolia Market}, I decided I needed new lamps & new wall decor & new...  Joanna wouldn't have approved quite yet.  =) But check back Friday & I will be doing a final reveal for the Kelly's Korner Show Us Your Life Home Tour.