How to Shiplap a wall

A few months now we started to dive into our kitchen demo. Starting with taking out the kitchen island, and moving to removing the upper cabinets, and bulkhead. Going back and forth between a few design layouts and ideas, we finally landed on keeping a nice transition from the kitchen to the dinning room and putting shiplap up on the leading wall to the dinning room.

Many questions have come through the blog, asking us about our experience with shiplap and how we do it. Well, this will be my attempt to answer these questions.

Starting from the bottom and working your way up, it is very-very important that the bottom board is level from end to end. Nail the bottom board using a pneumatic nail gun with nails longer than the 1/2 inch shiplip and roughly 1/2 inch of dryway to hit a stud (2 1/4 inch nails). Since there was not a finished wall in the kitchen shorter nails are used.

As you work your way up, use a large level across the top and tap down each board until the tongue and groove is fully seated and level. As you move up, I nail on the inner lip in a downward angle to hide nails, and save time in patching and covering the nails from the front pace. Another really good tool is a very small nail punch, its wonderful for those nails that didn’t drive all they down into the wood stock, they can be hit beyond the surface and filled afterwards.

As you work up, continue to ensure that every board is level as it will impact all boards above it. Once your reach the top of the wall, enclose the edge with a nice piece of crown or trim, and caulk all to be painted later on to maintain a seamless look from edge to edge. Keep in mind that as seasons change the wood will flex and edges or butted ends may expand. If you are looking for a super clean look, when you butt up ends, I would recommend cutting the ends at an angle to hide the flexing of the wood. If you like a nice rough country/rustic look leaving them straight as we did will expose the splice points.

Thank all, and I hope everyone as excited as we are for Baseball season being back!!! Oh we love Baseball in this house, and look forward to going to our first game of the season! Thanks.

 

See how we used plywood to shiplap in our last home…

Click [HERE] to see how we shiplapped for super cheap in our last home!