Buying a house is scary. Buying a house built in 1984 and has never ever been updated? Even scarier. At our initial walk through of our home, the realtor said “you have to look past the ugly”. There was no where to look my friends. Old Carpet, old wallpaper, old light fixtures. Not the “cool kind”
of old. Dated old. The location and size of the house was perfect and it is a very well built home. One of the main reasons we loved our home was because our daughters bedroom has great square footage. Since moving in we have changed her room no less than 4 times. I couldn’t settle on a theme or style. Finally one day after watching “Fixer Upper”, I said “that’s it! Planked walls!”. I messaged my hubby and told him of my idea. He just so happened to be tearing down a deck at work that day! Kismet! He brought home the old beat up decking and we got to work. We mapped out the studs and marked them with a sharpie up the wall. We then measured the space. We needed to know width and height. After making sure we had ample planks we began cutting. One by one we cut the boards to fit and nailed them to the studs. Her wall is 13 feet wide and these boards were 16 feet. That helped cut down on install time as we only had to make one cut! My original plan was to paint this whole room white, including her walls and this plank wall. So many of my Instagram followers talked me in to leaving them “as is”. They are naturally weathered and the screw holes give it more of a rustic feel.
Few tips I learned….
I’m glad I had already painted that wall dark. Otherwise her white wall would have shown through all the cracks.
Start at the top. We didn’t and lesson learned. The boards are somewhat warped and they were great the first half of the wall. By the time we got to the top, it wasn’t as pretty.
Make sure your nails are long enough to go through the board and in to the studs. Thankfully hubby knew to do that.
Also thankful hubby knew how to cut out the wood for the electrical outlet (I would have been clueless)
That’s it! I hope I’ve answered any and all questions but if not, please feel free to comment and I will answer as best I can! Happy Saturday everyone!
– Lara
Junque Cottage Farmhouse Decor 