One of the many DIY projects on our list was a shiplap wrapped fireplace. If you read about our powder room you know that we installed actual tongue-and-groove shiplap on those walls, but this would be a bit different. Since the vibe we’re going for in most of the house is kind of a mid-century modern meets farmhouse/rustic look (you may think that’s a weird combination but it’s the best description I’ve got for now!), the fireplace needed to have a cleaner look than the real stuff we used in that space. In such a small room like the powder room, the dimensionality of the boards worked great but as a feature in our main living space, I wanted something a bit simpler so that it was a more of a subtle feature that didn’t make your eye get stuck at the front of the house. As a result, I needed to find another solution so I began searching Pinterest and YouTube for alternatives and sure enough I came across nickel spaced shiplap – which is really just plywood ripped down to size and attached to the wall using a nickel to space out the individual boards. (And now you know)
The inspiration for our fireplace came from a home I kept being drawn to on Houzz which very much embodied the vibe I was just describing. They’ve found a way to warm up the clean lines of a mid-century style with wood and natural elements that you would expect more from a farmhouse. Though we won’t have a wood burning fireplace that this one has, the way the proportions of the cow painting matches the fireplace opening is what we’re going for.
So now that you’ve seen what we’re hoping our fireplace will look like in the end, I’ll give you a sneak peek of the installation process.
You may be thinking to yourself “this project doesn’t seem like something that NEEDS to get done so you guys can move in…” and you would absolutely be correct. HOWEVER, when you’re married to a man who works in the AV industry and is working with fancy TV’s and technology all day, you better believe that one of the first things to be completed in your new house is where your TV is going to be mounted. In fact, there was a very specific date and time that this needed to be done by (there was some silly dirt-bike race thingie that was going to be on :-P). I’m not complaining, it’s much nicer to be at the house working for hours on end with some noise in the background, and it makes those days when I’m stuck there waiting for deliveries easier…but no…it didn’t NEED to happen this early in the game.
We started this project by guesstimating the amount of plywood we needed to buy (yes, we should have taken proper measurements, and yes, we should have thought about the fact that our last boards were not going to be 6″ because the table saw was eating 1/8″ each time we sent the plywood through) and buying the ever-important table saw which the husband had been itching for. And of course, since we guesstimated we ended up taking a few additional trips to The Deeps (but those are really never-ending anyway). Once we had the material, we ripped down the plywood to 6″ strips and got to attaching them to the fireplace starting from the top.
If you read my post about when we built the fireplace and shower niches you may remember that we found out the floor and walls were not level the hard way. Another reason we decided to wrap the fireplace in shiplap was to ensure that this was not noticeable by correcting the off-ness that there was (both in the space for the TV as well as front to back across the whole thing). This meant that there was a LOT of measuring, shimming and wood-filling to do which added up to a project that took WAYYYYYY LONGER than we anticipated (seems to be a common theme with reno’s that we should have realized). Though there were times that he got super frustrated and wanted to just be done with it, I have to give a shout out to the husband for a job well done on this project for sure. There’s NO WAY I could have installed the shiplap on this thing by myself and when all was said and done, it came out pretty darn well. All that’s left to do is finish filling and sanding the gaps and paint this sucker white!
Until next time!
Pleasant To Pinewood 