Thursday, September 24, 2015

Phony Shiplap Fireplace

I never knew the word "shiplap" until I began watching HGTV's Fixer Upper. If you have never seen the show you are missing out greatly! If you have seen the show you know Joanna loves these vintage wood planked walls and she has turned me into a believer as well. They have a way of brightening a room and making it feel like a cozy farmhouse cottage all at the same time. 
 Unfortunately for me I would never be able to rip down drywall or brick in my 90's home to reveal beautiful vintage shiplap. It just ain't gonna happen...BUT I still wanted to test the waters and see if I liked this all-magical wall covering in my home so I chose the fireplace to experiment.

I have been wanting to give the fireplace some height for awhile now and make it more of a focal point in the room. 
Here it is before I started:


 I began by nailing up some 1x3.5" primed MDF boards on each side from the mantel to the crown molding. 


I took this paneling purchased at Home Depot and, using my jigsaw, cut it to the dimension's to fit snugly inside the MDF boards. 


I then put a piece of corner trim mold mitered at 45 degrees to frame out the inside. 
This was for two reasons: 
1.) It hid the horrible job I had done cutting the paneling perfectly straight and 
2.) It made the edges look fancier. 
Win, win!

I caulked, and filled and painted everything white. When it had all dried I stood there in disbelief...my fireplace looked NOTHING like shiplap. I mean I actually sorta hated it. The lines had all but disappeared so it was basically a big white wall.

I'm sorry there is no further documentation because I never thought it would make it to the blog due to the fact it was a big hard FAIL...at first. 

After forfeiting all efforts to fix my mistake and letting my brain refocus for the day I was ready to ATTEMPT to tackle it again in the morning. I took some light grey acrylic paint called "Granite Grey" by Apple Barrel and with a small tipped paintbrush I went over the lines. It took two coats to make it look solid enough that I liked it... and I did! FINALLY I liked it! 
I probably could have used a paint pen instead and it might have been a little easier but I used what I had.

Here's my fireplace all dressed up!



In the end it turned out well! Just goes to show even if a D.I.Y. seems like a zonk it may turn itself around so don't give up!

2 comments:

  1. Is that door in your house? Where did you find that and what is it called? <3 it and I can't find one any place. :(

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  2. Hi Natalie! The door in the first picture is not my house (unfortunately, it's gorgeous!)

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