Install Shiplap Planks in Your Home with These Tips
January 20, 2019
When it comes to decorating a home, wood is one of the most popular materials. It is durable, easy to clean and take care of, and can be used to create a lot of different styles and looks. Nowadays, people are turning more and more to peel and stick wood accent walls and peel and stick wood panels. If you would like to use stick on shiplap to update your home, here are the things you should do to make the project go better.
- Start by getting your wood. One of the reasons putting up your own wall coverings is so cost-effective is that the starting material is easy to procure. You can do to just about any home improvement store and get what you need. Most of the time, they will cut it for free. Another option is to go to your local lumber yard.
- Once you have the wood, you need to prepare it for installation. This will prevent you from having to paint everything after it has been installed. There are instances where this step can be skipped so if you are unsure, talk to the experts where you bought your wood.
- Know where the studs are. If you are going to attach your shiplap panels with nails and not another kind of adhesive such as glue (this step is not needed if you use peel and stick wall panels or peel and stick wood accent walls), you need to find where your studs in your walls are. You will want to nail your new panels to these sections.
- Start at the top. Whether you are using peel and stick wood accent wall panels or nail on shiplap, you should start at the top. People spend a lot less time looking at the baseboards and you can do things there that can hide any issues. A word of advice: your ceiling is level but your floor may not be. Even if you do a perfect job, you may have to hide this fact and the best place to do that is at the baseboard. You can more easily cover any issues by placing your baseboard over the bottom of your wood panels.
- Start the process of adding putty and calk. After the wood panels have been installed, you need to clean the area up and ready it for painting. This is not something you will have to do if you used peel and stick wood accent wall materials but if you did not, you will have to get the look right by using putting and calk. You will need to apply this to the edges of the shiplap and around the baseboard. If you used nails, you can get rid of any indentations from your hammer or nail gun.
- Prepare the wood by sanding and priming, Before you add any stain or paint, you need to make sure the surface is clean and smooth. You can use a roller to prime most of the shiplap planks. For more detailed areas, you should whip out a paintbrush for your primer. Care needs to be taken to make sure only the bare minimum of primer so that you do not get into seams and change the color of the paint or stain.
- Get the color you want. At the end of the process, the fun work begins. This is when you can add the paint or the stain you want. This is the most creative part of the process. Again, when you are painting or staining, do not add too much to your rollers or brushes. You do not need a lot of paint or stain to get the right result. It makes a lot more sense to add layers than to just dump a bunch of paint or stain to your wood at the outset. Next, you can sit back and enjoy your new walls.
Putting up peel and stick wood accent walls and stick on wood panels is an easy way to change up the look of any room or home. The same can be said of stick on shiplap. These can give you the look you really want for a lot less money and time.