Shiplap Wall Decor

I LOVE the look of shiplap! If I could easily do a shiplap wall in our home, I would. But here in Greece where I live, our homes are made of concrete and brick with plaster over that – no drywall and wood. So every hole in the wall is a much bigger deal than it is when you’ve got drywall and wood.

However, I came up with a way to put a bit of shiplap up on the wall with only 2 anchored screws. Yay!

(I have done pallet signs in the past, but the wood is much thicker and more rustic…..for my bedroom I wanted the cleaner look of shiplap.)

Here’s what I did to make this Shiplap Wall Decor:

First, I cut my boards, based on how wide and high I wanted my shiplap board to be.

I wanted my wall decor board to be about 36″ x 20″, so I cut 7 planks 36″ long each (my planks were about 2 5/8″ wide).

Then I cut 2 boards to go crosswise on the back to nail my shiplap planks into.

(I just lined up my shiplap planks to see how long these 2 needed to be.)

How to Nail the Boards on:

Line the planks up across the 2 back supports.
You’ll be leaving the middle one un-attached until later, but start at the middle and work out to each end.

Don’t nail that middle plank in quite yet – but leave it there as a placeholder! You’ll want it to fit perfectly later!

I used coins to make equally measured gaps between my wood planks for that shiplap look. Then I just nailed the planks onto the 2 backboards.

So after the nailing, your shiplap wall board will look like this >>

If you don’t want the nails to be seen (so it looks like true shiplap), you can make sure they are hammered all the way in (not sticking out at all). Then put a little putty over them, let them dry, and lightly sand them smooth to blend and hide them.

I knew that my nails would be hidden by the photos I would be placing on my board, so I didn’t do this step.
I did do ONE to show you how you can (mostly) hide the nail. ⬇️ 😁

See the top nail that I put putty on and sanded before I painted?

After everything was nailed into place, I spray painted my wall board. Leave that middle plank in its place, still unattached, while you do this.

My paint choice was a chalky cream spray paint. It’s a gorgeous and easy way to chalk paint!

Because my bedroom wall (where this would be hung) is already cream, I wanted to give my board a bit of texture/color to stand out from the wall slightly.

What I did was spray a little bit of gray chalk paint onto my paint brush, then brush practically all of the paint off onto a paper towel so that just a dry dusting was left on my brush.

Then I ran my brush over my board so that just bits of the gray hit the high spots of my board.

Here you can see the difference between the solid cream and the cream that has the gray texture brushed over it.

The solid cream is gorgeous, and it has its place. I just needed a little contrast between my cream bedroom walls and this shiplap wall decor board…so the one with gray texture on top worked out better for this project.

Once you’ve let the paint on your shiplap wall decor dry completely, you can do the fun part of hanging it on the wall!

I used 2 screws with anchors to ensure that this would NOT fall out of the wall.

Tip: pre-drill holes into your 2 vertical support boards, then have someone hold it up for you while you drill through just enough to hit the wall and make marks. Remove the shiplap board and get anchors into the wall where those marks are.

There we go! Once it’s on the wall, you’ll take that middle plank that isn’t attached yet and nail it into place.

Take a little bit of that chalk paint on a brush and cover those new nailheads. Let that dry while you plan out your decor!

We had family photos taken last year, and I got them printed on a mat board, which was perfect for this shiplap board!

(I ordered from mpix.com and chose to have them mounted on “Single Weight Matboard.” It’s inexpensive and was perfect for this!)

Here’s a side view so you can see how thick that matboard is.

I used 3M command strips to mount my photos – quick and easy!

Here’s my finished shiplap wall decor in our master bedroom! I LOVEEE it! ❤️

I hired my oldest daughter to make the trendy pom-pom garland for me 😁. She used this pom-pom maker to whip these up really quickly!

Then I made a DIY garland by picking up some really cheap floral “bunches.” I cut open the plastic stem to see the individual wires and divide them into smaller sections. Then I strung them together as a garland. This saved me a lot of money versus buying a pre-made garland!

I also added some battery-operated lights to my shiplap board for a bit of sparkle. 😍