Sterlings biggest nursery project is complete thanks to HomeRight and their Super Finish Max paint sprayer! I am SO incredibly grateful to have partnered with them on this post. All opinions are my own.
For this project you’ll need:
- 1/4 inch plywood cut into the desired length
- HomeRight Super Finish Max Paint Sprayer
- White paint (we used door and trim paint)
- A hand sander with 120 grit sandpaper
- Nail gun and nails
- A level
- Nickels (for spacing)
Okay friends, I’ve been looking into doing a shiplap accent wall in my home for YEARS… (thank you Joanna Gaines!), and Sterling’s nursery was the perfect opportunity. We did a black and white, geometric themed nursery for our little guy, and this wall was the last piece of the puzzle, I cannot believe what a difference it has made in the overall look of the room and making it all come together. Just take a look at this before and after:
I did a TON of research to make sure I was finding the right materials and most cost-effective and quick way to do it. And honestly, any excuse to use our HomeRight Super Finish Max Paint Sprayer because it makes painting projects such a pleasure!
This wall measured approximately 9 feet tall by 13 feet long, giving us 117 feet of the wall needs to be covered. I planned for 128 square feet of materials, with a little extra, just in case. Some of the test materials included hardwood flooring and craftsman style trim, which were both quite expensive, costing between $2.00 – $4.00 per square foot… After bringing home samples of trim and hardwood flooring, but I realized that because they were so thick, we’d have to take off the trim on the floor and that just seemed like way too much work.
Nick recommended 1/4 in plywood, and we ended up finding 4 x 8 sheets of plywood (which only cost $15 per sheet) that we planned to cut down. Four sheets ended up doing the trick and getting us to the 128 square foot of materials goal.
We were able to have one of the workers at Home Depot slice the sheets into smaller pieces (12 inches I think), they charge per cut after the first 2 cuts, and we just needed to make them more manageable so we were able to bring home in our SUV.
When we brought them home, Nick cut them down again into six-inch slats (minus a 1/8 for the saw blade), making sure the cuts were all the same size which is the important part. This involved a little bit of trimming up a few uneven parts and making sure each slat was sanded by hand to help the edges of the wood looked and felt softer, removing those pesky little splintery edges. Next, we wiped the wood down with a damp cloth, to get off any remaining dust. Now they were ready to paint!
You might remember this handy little sprayer that helped us paint our shed in a day! Read that post here, gosh I love this little sprayer!
We used two saw horses and a piece of thicker plywood as our make-shift table and pallets with 2 x 4s we used white trim paint in our Super Finish Max Paint Sprayer and we layered three coats of paint, waiting for each piece to be completely dry before adding the next coat.
The hardest part of this whole painting process was that fact that we were fighting winter weather/storms and the cold weather did not add any benefits on the drying time. But where there’s a will there’s a way, and eventually, they did dry.
Because the nursery was already functioning with furniture and decorations, we just had to move a few things out of the way to get this wall installed. We started at the ceiling and worked our way down. Keep in mind that our ceiling wasn’t perfectly straight across the top, which is most likely the case for any ceiling… So there were some gaps that were a little bit wider than others.
We used a large level, a nail gun and nickels as our spacers between each of the wooden slats, to put this wall up.
Once we got the first three rows of boards nailed onto the wall, the rest came together pretty quickly… We also lucked out with the spacing. Coming up with a random pattern was probably the trickiest part, we tried to make sure the seams were random, because it looks a little bit more rustic, which is what we were going for.
The last row was a bit tight, but we made it work. We debated filling in the nail holes from the nail gun and ultimately decided to leave them unfilled, as we both felt that they added to the rustic charm of the room instead of a creating perfectly manicured shiplap wall, without any imperfections.
This cute girl was so excited to be in the picture, now that we were all done. The last step was moving back all of the furniture and hanging up the round mirror above the dresser. Last, adding the teepee, the baskets, pillows, stuffed animals, the fig tree, and all of the things on top of the dresser. This wall really made this space come together beautifully.
What did you think of this transformation? Tell me in the comments below! See something you loved? Find the links here: