Shiplap {Fireplace} Wall

I am happy to announce that I have shiplap in my house!  In addition to adding planks to our fireplace wall, we also planked over our fireplace cubby.  I was sad to loose all the decorating space but the leaving the drywall fireplace surround with planked walls on either side would have been a decorating crime.  I love how it turned out and can't wait to finish decorating the wall.

Here is a before shot of the fireplace wall.  The dark blue was pretty but made the space feel dark all the time even with the sun shining in.

First we painted the entire wall white so you couldn't see the blue behind the planks:

Then we hung our planks.  We purchased five 4' x 8' flooring underlayment sheets at Home Depot for $12 each and had the store cut our boards down to 7" strips.  The walls on each side of the fireplace was about 6' wide so we had some waste on each board which I will later use to make signs!  This picture is before we added planks above the fireplace:

See what I mean about a decorating crime by leaving it this way?  Much better with the planks covering the drywall cubby as you can see here:

Ahh....beauty to my eyes!  Next I painted all the planks and molding strips White Whisper by Glidden (same color as our existing fireplace surround, crown molding and baseboards).  In case you're wondering, I painted the sides of the boards as much as I could without doing them one by one, before we hung them on the wall.  This is was time well spent because the gaps between planks, spaced by nickels, are very much visible.

This picture was taken at night:

And this one was taken during the day:

Stay tuned for the decorated wall and some other living room updates!