My husband and I are trying to sell our house. We’ve had tons of lookers, but nothing farther than that. We decided this last weekend that we were going to do some quick updates to make our house more attractive. We decided to whitewash our fire place (https://busybeemum.com/white-washing-a-stone-fire-place-for-under-30/ instructions here) and to shiplap a wall as well.

We decided to do this around 12 on Saturday afternoon (crazy huh!) but we said, “If we’re going to do it, then we better do it now!” We’re both teachers, so our weeks are pack full of lesson plans, correcting, meetings, school and our own family. After measuring our wall, we headed down to our local Lowe’s to check out what they had.

We found some shiplap boards that were already whitewashed, and they were $9.97 per board. It was a little more expensive than we were hoping for, but I loved the whitewash look and for a few dollars more I figured it was worth it because I didn’t have to do it on my own. Once we bought the amount that we needed, we loaded up the truck and headed home.

I think the worse part of starting a project is rounding up all of the tools that we needed! That took us around 2 hours just to get the tools! Very frustrating! We gathered up, a nail gun with nails, a level, a pencil and a stud finder.

We then started finding the studs in our wall. Once we found the studs, we marked them with pencil on the wall.

We started at the top of our wall and worked our way down. Begin by grabbing one full board and place it up on the wall. Make sure the board is level and then start on the left side of the board and shoot a nail into the board where a stud is. Then measure the remaining space on the row you are working on and cut the next board to fit that space.

To begin a new row, cut a board shorter and then nail on. You want to have a staggered look on the wall, so don’t have the same lengths of boards. If all the seams line up it will look out of place and a little weird.

Continue down the wall until you have covered it completely. You can do one of two things once you get down to where your baseboard is. You can either but the shiplap into the baseboard which may require the use of a table saw, skill saw, or jig saw to make sure it fits well. I don’t recommend the jig saw option though. It is hard to handle as it jumps around, and it’s just not as safe as the other options. The other option is to remove the baseboard and run the shiplap all the way down to the floor and then replace the baseboard once you have completed that.

After you are done, you can choose to paint, whitewash or just leave the boards plain. I picked boards that were already whitewashed so it would save me some time.

The biggest key in doing this project is to be brave and to make sure that each board is level before you nail them up. If you decide to do this project post a picture so we can see how pretty your walls are!!!

This project took us about 3 hours (after chasing around all of the tools that we needed). It is a great way to update your house and it takes just a day to complete.

What you will need for this project:

• Nail gun
• Appropriate nails to fit your gun
• Level
• Tape measure
• Pencil
• Shiplap boards
• Paint, whitewash etc. (only if you choose to paint your wall when you are done.)
• Chalk line (if you want to snap a line from the top of your wall to the bottom on each stud)
• Chop saw