Hey Friends!

Today I am sharing a DIY Faux Shiplap Fireplace Tutorial. Plus a Giveway for one of these Half Windmill’s. I’ve also linked up with my Farmhouse Friends to bring you more Farmhouse ideas. Scroll down to the bottom to enter the giveway and see all the other Farmhouse tutorials

Last year when we built our house, one of my must haves was a stone fireplace and cedar mantel. When we went to the design center the standard builder grade was tile so I upgraded to the stone. When we picked out the stone I picked what I thought was lighter earth tones. Yeah, well as we all know stone varies. The day the fireplace was going in I was ready to take a sledge hammer to it! Seriously, it was orange! We also told the lady at the design center we wanted our fireplace to go up to the half way point of the wall. She wrote down “half wall” in fine print that only means up to 5 feet. Our living room is two story. Doh!

Anywho this is what we got! A squatty too brown fireplace.

Before I get too far into the post, yes that’s a TV above my fireplace. When the husband says he wants a TV over the fireplace, he gets a TV over the fireplace. 🙂

So now that we got that out of the way this is the after.

We have a two story living room and the 5-foot fireplace just didn’t look right so I decided to add shiplap above the stone to give it some height.

It was a two-step process to get this look.

Part 1:

A few months ago I white washed the stone. I used paint by adding water to the mix.

1part paint x 3 part water

I used brushed paint and water mixture on and blotted with a paper towel if it got too dark. I want some of the natural stone to show through so I didn’t paint it solid white.

Part 2:

For the faux shiplap I used 1×4″ plywood and ripped the plywood down into 8″ strips. Luckily my wall was only 7 feet wide so I just layered the strips on.

After I cut the strips using my table saw I sanded them strips down some. If you don’t have a table saw you can have your hardware store rip the boards down for you.

I used a stud finder to find my studs on the wall. I marked the studs about 10″ up from the bottom.

After I got the first board up I  then used the placement of the nails as a guide as I made my way the wall.  I attached the boards with 2″ brad nails using my Ryobi cordless nail gun.

In between each row I place pennies in between the boards to give it a small space in between.

I cut the boards around my existing TV stand so that I didn’t have to cut any holes for the wiring.

Once I had the boards up I used 1 and 1/4 inch molding and framed out the area. I mitered the ends at 45 degree angles and attached them with brad nails.

Next, I used paintable caulk on the mitered corners and nail holes on the trim. I didn’t caulk the nail holes on the wood part as I wanted them to show a little bit.

Once I had everything caulked, I painted the entire thing using a flat white paint.

This entire project cost me around $40! I have some many ideas of other places in my house for faux shiplap.

I love how the shiplap gives the wall some height! No more squatty awkward fireplace.