Our house has us running in circles. When we first moved in, we painted an accent wall a dark grey blue color. We loved it so much that we also painted our board and batten the same color. Fast forward a little bit, and we also painted our kitchen a lighter blue. And then we realized there is too much of a good thing. So, we decided it was time to change it up! We thought about a couple directions we could go, but ultimately decided on shiplap!
We were a little hesitant about doing shiplap because its so trendy and runs the risk of looking dated quickly. But it’s been around for long enough that I think if done right, it just might survive the test of time.
Anyway, we decided to go this direction for of a few reasons:
- Our house has definite farmhouse vibes because of the exposed beams in the living room. It’s a modern take on the farmhouse genre, but shiplap wouldn’t feel out of place.
- We wanted something subtle. I borrowed some wisdom from John & Sherry from Young House Love and decided that we wanted the kitchen cabinets and the board and batten to be our stars. This little accent wall is just a supporting player now.
We learned long ago that a room where too many things scream for your attention can get chaotic. Plus, choosing which pieces will be the focal point relieves the pressure to make every single item in a room “interesting” which can be a tiresome, budget busting, and sometimes impossible goal. So we often break design choices loosely into two categories: stars and supporting players. The stars are the items you want people to notice when they first walk in – like the bold wallpaper, colorful rug, large chandelier, or dramatic paint on the walls.
John & Sherry, Young House Love
- Price was a factor. As always, we are balling on a budget. Wallpaper can be really expensive! And we would have to sand down the texture on our walls, so it would be a big project. We ended up spending $125 and about 6 hours on this project. Not bad!
- And maybe the most vague and important reason is that we just thought it felt right ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Shiplap is a super self explanatory process, and was made super quick and easy for us with our nail gun. It’s really just a matter of cutting your boards to fit whatever space you are covering, and then nailing them to the wall on the grooves, which get covered up by the next board.
Before we got started with nailing the boards up, we added a strip of quarter round wood floor trim to the exposed edge to have a clean finish.
The other kind of tricky part of this project was cutting around the boards to account for the outlets. Michael did this by sawing the vertical edges and then chiseling out the horizontal edge.
After all of the boards were hung up, we went back and added some more nails to secure any boards that seemed a little loose. We covered them with putty, sanded, and painted! I also filled in the small gap between the quarter round edge and the wall and retextured to make it look as clean as possible. I think I did a pretty good job for not really knowing what I was doing.
I’m so happy with how it turned out! It’s a great change from the dark blue, and our whole house is feeling fresher and brighter!
