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5 Fixer Upper Shiplap Secrets with Nicki Koziarz for Love Your Life Friday

 

5 Shiplap Secrets from Nicki Koziarz for Love Your Life Friday at KarenEhman.com

People always ask me if it’s so fun to live on a Fixer Upper Farm. I tend to cringe a little when asked this because I often think they are picturing this magical TV set where a house is transformed to a beautiful home in about thirty minutes.

The truth is, buying a Fixer Upper, without an overflowing bank account, requires a lot of patience, creative thinking and hard work. You have to stop comparing your progress to Chip and Joanna’s instant transformations. And you have to learn to be content with the progress YOU can make.

So yes, it’s fun but we have to keep taking this one project at a time. And I’m excited to share with you a little fixer upper secret we recently discovered about that coveted ship lap look we see all over Pinterest.

It’s actually NOT as expensive or hard as one might think. Don’t read: CHEAP AND EASY AND QUICK. It’s still going to cost some money and it’s a time-consuming project.

But if you have the right tools and the right attitude, you can transform a space pretty inexpensively to a lovely little shiplap room!

So here are DIY Shiplap secrets:

Secret One: Start with a small area

5 Shiplap Secrets from Nicki Koziarz for Love Your Life Friday at KarenEhman.com 5 Shiplap Secrets from Nicki Koziarz for Love Your Life Friday at KarenEhman.com

If we were to do this again, I’d start with one wall before tackling an entire room. Start with something small so you can get the hang of it and then if you love it, move to something bigger!

Secret Two: Plywood!

5 Shiplap Secrets from Nicki Koziarz for Love Your Life Friday at KarenEhman.com

That’s right! Plywood. We used 11/32 Pine Sanded Plywood. We did a lot of research and found a lot of people had used plywood and loved it. So, we figured we had nothing to lose to try it out and surprise … it worked great! 

Secret Three: Let them cut it for you!  

This was the biggest surprise we discovered in this process! The great people at either Lowe’s or Home Depot will actually cut your plywood, to the specifications you want, for .25 a cut. This was the best!

Secret Four: Cuts for Corners

  5 Shiplap Secrets from Nicki Koziarz for Love Your Life Friday at KarenEhman.com

To get your corners right, you’ll need to use a chop saw and cut it at a 45-degree angle. This can be the trickiest part of the project, so be sure to take your time to get it right.

We also used a nail gun to secure the plywood to the walls, it was pretty easy this way but you will need to fill in the nail holes before you paint because there will be a lot! 

Secret Five: 2-in-1 Paint

5 Shiplap Secrets from Nicki Koziarz for Love Your Life Friday at KarenEhman.com

Splurging for a paint and primer in one! You will still have to do at least three coats, but I can’t imagine how many coats it would take without that type of paint. Plywood soaks that paint right in. Ours probably could have used another coat but I wanted a rougher look and … let’s just be real. I WAS DONE. [smiles]

5 Shiplap Secrets from Nicki Koziarz for Love Your Life Friday at KarenEhman.com 5 Shiplap Secrets from Nicki Koziarz for Love Your Life Friday at KarenEhman.com

So there you have it! Five secrets for DIY Shiplap!

Happy Friday!

To help you reach toward all your DIY dreams, today I’m giving away a $25 gift card to Lowes and a copy of my new book to help inspire you to finish strong, 5 Habits of a Woman Who Doesn’t Quit!  leave a comment sharing what one of your DIY dreams is and we will randomly select a winner and email them next Friday!

The-Koziarz-Family-The-Koziarz-Family-0004-1024x682Nicki Koziarz is a speaker, writer & leader in today’s generation.

She is on staff at Proverbs 31 Ministries, where she gets to help lead thousands of women through their online Bible studies.

Nicki’s a girl hungry for her generation to know and understand the truth God offers. Her first book, 5 Habits of a Woman Who Doesn’t Quit releases in March of 2016 and the Bible study to follow in May 2016. Nicki speaks nationally at events, retreats and conferences.

One of the greatest joy’s in her life is being a wife to Kris and mom to 3 amazing girls:

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27 Comments

  1. We are currently working on a deck for our pool. The pool area brings many hours of fellowship and memories can not wait to have it finished!

  2. Paint and decorate the guest room. We have lived there 15 years and that is the one room I haven’t painted yet. I’d like to make some kind of headboard for the bed, but cannot decide between old doors or windows or an old picket fence.

  3. Just starting our ship lap project so perfect time to see your post. Can you share what paint and the color you used. Thanks!!!

  4. Ah, yes! We just moved into our Fixer Upper three weeks ago, and I have to daily extend grace to myself in not being able to complete my projects as quickly as I envisioned. I do have one fabulous, but not too big, fireplace wall that I want to transform with shiplap and a couple of areas of board and batten to tackle, but first, I get to teach myself to install a beveled subway tile!

  5. I would LOVE TO redo my kitchen. It’s on the To Do list but just hadnt happened. Shiplap would be great on one of my walls. I can’t wait to try it!

  6. We live in a bi-level home. Recently, our dishwasher decided to run ALL.NIGHT.LONG. and totally flooded the main rooms upstairs and the family room/half bath/laundry room downstairs. The ceiling came down, carpet and furniture ruined, quite a big mess. So far, we have replaced the carpet upstairs with hardwood, remodeled the whole kitchen, fixed the ceiling and added new can lights, and tiled the entryways into the family room (from the garage and outside to the patio). We still need to work on the half bath – new tile, vanity, sink, toilet, light fixture…. and replace the carpet in the family room and stairs going up. The list is long but getting shorter everyday that Hubby can work on it – he’s doing all the work himself. It’s been a process, but it is coming along – just in time to sell and buy a bigger house for our growing family. :D

  7. My dream is to re-do our bath. And no I’m not crazy for the shiplap look everyone else seems to love. But our bath needs paint, a new sink/vanity and floor. So I’m dreaming about the “look” I want. Clean and simple.

  8. My husband and I have two little (well actually they are kind of big) DIY dreams. He wants an outdoor building for our all his manly things (tools, weightlifting equipment, lawn mowers…), and I would love to have a section of our back porch covered with a roof. It’d be perfect for sitting outside when the raindrops are coming down or with a glass of tea when the sun is blazing hot.

  9. Our hope is to update a garage that had been converted into a den, into a master bedroom so that 2 teens can have their own room. It needs updating since the garage door area was not correctly framed. we’ve been trying to save but medical conditions seem to eat into the savings every year.

  10. I love this look and really want to do this as an accent wall in my living room :)
    Thank you for this chance to win.

  11. I have a what could be lovely back porch room. Could be lovely if it was given a lot of TLC. The old dark paneling needs to be painted a lighter color. The large windows need to be rid of 50 years of all sorts of gunk let alone screens repaired and hinges lubed for smoother operation. Can’t completely close most of them at the moment. Floor, lighting, and doors need to be updated if possible if not replaced.
    So much potential…….

  12. My husband and I purchased a 115 year old farmhouse last year, the house, for the most part, has had all the renovations needed. The attached workroom, and barn however are in need of updates to complete the renovations that the previous owner started. My ultimate dream is to complete those updates and convert our “workroom” into a little country shop with hand made treasures and repurposed items.

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