Add Character To Your Home With Shiplap

This new construction thing goes against every fiber in our being. Our home is completely void of character. We love homes that need TLC, renovation, or full restoration. Creaky floors, wobbly newel posts, settling, windows out of square, and beefy woodwork, all hidden under layers of disgusting carpet and wallpaper. That’s the thing about existing fixer-uppers… someone’s got to do the work. We already fully renovated one house, had no time to do a second, and no desire to live in a construction zone with a newborn and preschooler. So we decided to go with new construction and a 2-week pre-baby move in date. And quickly started looking for ways to “add character to your home” everywhere.

You can read tons and tons more about the farmhouse building process. The longer we were living in here, the more I realized we had better get with the character-adding ASAP. ASAP for parents with newborns and preschoolers is like… years and years and years later.

One of the very first permanent projects we did to instantly boost the character feel, was to add shiplap in our main hallway. We have barn wood, salvage wood signs, an antique door, and some board and batten, but the long white hallway was screaming out for something.

Add character to your home: We shiplapped. My favorite verb.

Oh, this post contains affiliate links for ultimate convenience – see my full disclosure here. We ripped sheets of luan to 8″ wide on the table saw, and staggered the seams randomly on the big wall. Andrew attached them to studs we marked in the wall using a nailer and some liquid nails.

I painted it white, using something like 4 coats of basic white paint we had leftover from projects.

And, I am so in love with it! And all it’s funkiness. And the signs on the door, and the whole hallway now is perfectly perfect.

Sidebar, that runner is from Target! I got it on clearance for $44 because it was opened and repackaged, and haven’t seen it since. Here are a handful of comparable ones, that are also affordable!

I am in the process of convincing Andrew for the need to hang shiplap around the rest of the entryway for pure visual interest and character building, but he is not 100% sold. Yet.