Easy & Inexpensive Wood Plank Wall Treatment DIY Tutorial

if you're looking to install a wood plank wall treatment I'll show you how I did mine for under $100 I got three sheets of e in thick plywood and my daughter and I ripped them down to 6 in wide if you don't have a table saw this would be just as easy and probably a little safer to do it on a piece of foam on the ground and a circular saw with a guide that's what I did last time when I did a project similar to this planking my front porch ceiling in Wood these thin planks have held up even outside for the last 4 years perfectly so that is why I'm going to try this project on a wall to cover up some ugly blaster in my daughter's bedroom renovation Lily is 12 and you'll see throughout this video she's helping me with all these projects I have love teaching her DIY and I'm so excited she's showing some interest since we're doing her room now we're going to whitewash all the planks this is her design idea and I'm just going to wipe off the excess we have to seal the planks which is easiest done before install I put one layer of this water-based polyurethane it's my go-to sealer for durability when it dries I'll sand all of the plank and the edges nice and smooth and then apply a second layer this gives each plank a satin Sheen and a really durable finish when the finishing was done I laid them all out in the sunshine to dry three sheets of plywood created enough planks for me to do a large wall 12 ft wide by 8 ft tall you could even do bigger than that because I had several planks left over now in the room we're renovating it already had a wall treatment of Wayne scotting this used to be my son Liam's Nursery it's going to be transformed into Lily's new room but the walls are plaster and la so I had no clue when I removed this Wayne scotting there would be such a terrible surprise behind it whatever all this black stuff is remains a mystery because I tested it for asbest thinking it might be black mastic glue and it tested negative we also tested it for mold and it was negative so I think it's some kind of oxidization of an adhesive I don't know I feel the most comfortable just removing it so I began by taping off the HB so particles didn't get into my central system and then I sprayed it wet just to again reduce particles in the air I wore some PPE and I started to remove the plaster bit by bit removing plaster is so tedious this took several hours and I only removed what I had to to get rid of this nasty area I'm thinking you know it's going to be hidden behind my wall treatment but if someone ever took down those wood planks in the future I would hate for them to find this and have the same concerns that I did so let's get started with install of these wood planks to cover up this ugly plaster and La wall I'm starting up my laser level this is going to make this project so much easier and you know laser levels aren't nearly as expensive as they used to be this one from our video sponsor fantic is really affordable and has so many cool features it self levels you can decide to light up the horizontal or vertical line one at a time or both together it has an awesome magnetic swivel I have a special discount code to make this Laser Level under $70 for Black Friday shop now the link in the description you can also get the tripod which I highly recommend it can extend super high and it's just so useful to go perfectly with your laser level and what a great choice for or a Christmas gift for the handy human on your list and be sure to look at other fantic products they have so many helpful and inventive things to help you around the house I use a laser level on probably half of my DIY projects and it just makes it so I'm not always having to pull out my level because I can trust it it's going to be perfect on this project for installing the stretchers these vertical pieces of wood are being added to the wall on the areas where I want my wood plank seams to land my seams are going to be symmetric but I can't very well nail them into the wall in its current condition for the stretcher that I could not line up with a wall stud I am drilling holes for toggle bolts to hold that tight against my plaster and leth it is really hard to mount things on plaster and Le I actually have a video coming up soon to talk about all the different ways to work with those type of walls even though they can be finicky so I have to drill pretty big holes for for these toggle anchors and then I'm going to install them very carefully providing pressure against the bolt so that that toggle bolt really pulls tight against the laugh because I'm lifting all of the planks away from the current wall I have to also add wood blocking for where I want to hang the headboard in the future and so I'm adding this scrap piece of lumber here this project really was so good for using up tons of my scrap wood I wanted to show here that I did have to cut with my oscillating multi-tool The Cove molding that met the drop ceiling along the wall just so that the planks would slide nice and flush at first I started install thinking that I could just put my planks right up against the ceiling but my amazing laser level actually told me that one side to the other the ceiling was not level is off by a whole inch and so I ended up having to bring my horizontal line down measuring from it and starting off the ceiling then that ceiling piece I cut at an angle kind of scribing it and fitting in later unlike the porch ceiling I showed at the beginning of this video where I nailed my thin planks to beadboard this one is going to be Hollow behind and so in hindsight I should have chosen a thicker plywood because this e in plywood needed more support than I expected so as I was installing they were bowing a little bit and I had to add another piece of stretcher through the center just to to get that long plank to stay flat it's important doing this project that you consider your walls on either side might not be as Plum as you expect and so each plank I cut individually to be the exact measurement needed I don't want any molding covering the ends of my wall I just want to run a bead of culk so it's important to do each cut individually that way so let's get into install first I use a construction adhesive on my stretcher to do a little bead of glue I usually would not glue up wall treatments but this time it's going to be fine because it's just on the stretcher if I was putting the planks directly on the wall I probably would not have used an adhesive then I install the wood plank I cut to 24 in first with short brad nails if I had a pin nailer I would use that instead because the smaller the nail the less visible the hole is then I use my laser measure to get the exact measurement to cut my plank to finish out that Row the gaps between each row I am just kind of eyeballing but they're very thin sometimes people use a nickel to space them you could have them pushed up tight against each other but that Tec Gap gives you enough room for variation and makes it look a little bit more like authentic shiplap to cut around obstacles like the outlet and the vent I just used my oscillating multi-tool marked where I needed to cut and then was careful because my material is so thin when I installed it I pulled my outlet forward the screws that attach to the Box are long enough that this work just fine to extend the vent out to the new depth of the wall I actually just applied duct tape around the whole perimeter I will be putting baseboard here but only where the bed frame isn't going to be pushed up against the wall treatment so you'll see this short piece of baseboard is going to go right up to where I know I'm going to have one leg of the bed but then I didn't cut the right side of the walls baseboard yet cuz I want to get the bed in place so it it'll look kind of weird for a bit but on the edges where the wood planks meet the other two walls I was able to run a bead of clear paintable caul when it cured I ran a tap line painted it and removed it immediately for a very crisp Edge I did a similar thing along where the wood plank wall meets the drop ceiling except I just used white culk here's how my wood plank wall treatment turned out I love the variation in color and the warmth and interest this brings to the room my daughter loves it so much which is most important um there are certain things I would do differently if I did it again but I'm hoping that by showing you my method I can give you ideas how to recreate this in your home a lot of people use like flooring but I couldn't do that in this situation because I had to use those stretchers and pull it off of my wonky plaster wall you could also use tongue and groove actual shiplap but it costs hundreds more so this is a really inexpensive way to get this look and I hope you enjoyed my video thanks so much for watching welcome to the woods we'll catch you again next time