Modern Shiplap Wall - One Room Challenge Week 3

Welcome to week 3 of the One Room Challenge for our family room makeover. This week we tackled the problem wall. The tired and dated vinyl wall covering on the back wall must go. To cover up the old vinyl wall covering we decided to put in a modern version of the popular shiplap wall treatment.

The back wall of our family room had an old dated wall vinyl installed probably some time in the 1980’s if not from the very beginning in 1979. Who knows? It is tough, textured, and covered up with many many layers of paint. Below is a close up shot of the same wall vinyl that is currently in the adjoining foyer to our family room to show you just how dated this wall treatment looks. The foyer is next on our project list.

I decided I wanted to cover it up with a modern shiplap wall treatment and my husband figured out how to do it for me.

Most of us when we think of shiplap walls think of Chip and Joanna of Fixer Upper and farmhouse style. But the thing is, shiplap walls can actually work for any style interior or exterior. The final look will depend on the width and height of the boards you use, the layout of the boards, and the color it is painted.

For our wall treatment, we decided to cut each board individually from a sheet of 4′ x 8′ plywood. Then each individual board would be 8″ in height to proportionally fit the back wall of our family room that has 16′ ceilings. The boards are also installed in a offset pattern around the large back window.

Cutting the boards this size and style fits our more modern house without the room looking like an out of place farmhouse decor in a modern house. Trust me, the new wall treatment looks amazing compared to the old and dated wall vinyl.

I just have to put in a high-five here for my husband. He worked tirelessly on this wall treatment in his spare time over a few weekends to bring my vision to light. He is my superhero husband who works longs hours in Neurosurgery as a Physician Assistant putting broken people back together and still builds me a new wall just because I wanted it.

Modern Shiplap Wall – One Room Challenge Week 3

The first step in the wall renewal project was to paint a coat of white primer over the tan colored wall vinyl. Since the shiplap wall will have small cracks between each board we definitely didn’t want the tan color peeking through.

After removing the baseboards and the window trim, my husband started at the bottom of the wall with the longer boards. He installed each board in an offset pattern to anchor the design of the entire wall.

And then he measured again, and would cut another board. Then install that board to the wall around the window, measure again, and cut yet another board. He established the pattern around the window on one side and then measured and cut new boards to match the same pattern on the other side. Creating the offset pattern for the boards required meticulous measuring and cutting each board one at the time and attaching it to the wall to match the pattern.

Cutting around the angle of the cathedral ceiling and the beams was also a challenge but we figured it out with spare pieces. By this time we had used up all of the plywood boards and were NOT going back to the store for the need of such small pieces.

These boards are NEVER coming off! Not only are they attached with nail glue but he also used 24 gauge nails on each board. We will have to destroy the wall before we remove these boards.

The next few steps in our project is to have the new carpet installed and to paint all of the walls. In a perfect world we would have finished the modern shiplap wall treatment and painted the walls before the carpet was installed but sometimes a project just doesn’t work out that way.

Be sure to visit my post next week. I will show you the painted walls and the new modern design, pet friendly carpet we are having installed.