Shiplap

Wow how time flies.  Once again I'm way behind on posts though progress on the house has been great.  In any event, today is father's day, and I think it is only right that we recognize those that have imparted to us their mastery of the home improvement way.  Those budda's of the work bench. The swami's of the hammer swing.  The king's of carpentry...You get the idea.

So we left off with shiplap.  As I previously posted we had no luck getting the type of product we sought.  Elizabeth was able to come up with an alternative, however, after some internet research.  So off we went to Lowes where we had them rip 4 x 8 foot sheets of utility plywood into 6 inch strips.  In order to obtain that classic spacing look between boards we used pennies to separate boards before nailing.  In the end we are very happy with the look.  It creates a bit of a cottage effect that breaks up the sheet rock wall look and it pairs well with the bungalow style of our house.  Plus, it cost us less than $100 to do the wall and the area over the fireplace.  

 To tie it into the living room I rebuilt the frame around the chimney and faced it with the shiplap as well.

That brown you see poking out from under the shiplap is the paper backing of fiberglass insulation I placed in the space around created by the framing.  It hadn't previously had insulation and I can only imagine it was a major heat sink for the house.

Once the shiplap was up the trim needed to be added both to the chimney area as well as the walls and baseboard.  I was able to salvage some of the trim I had removed though most of it had so many layers of sloppily applied pain that it wasn't worth re-hanging.  The trim for around the fireplace was courtesy of the wood that came when I tore out the drop ceilings. 

So with the walls up and the trim coming together its was time for a little clean-up.  We could finally start getting some of that paper off the wood floors that had gone down for protection. Plus, the walls were ready for paint. Elizabeth has a real eye for color so I turned her loose, and as the upcoming posts will show she has really brought things back together.