Plank Wall DIY Tips + Bathroom Updates

Hi friends! Before I start this long but really exciting post about our plank wall DIY project, be sure to visit Pretty Handy Girl today after you are done here to see my very first contributor post on her blog! I promise you will love it, think Trés Frugal DIY Gift Idea.

We have been making so much progress in our basement bathroom remodel, it is finally starting to look like a room! Which is a far cry from the foundation walls and cement floor we had only a few months ago. This past weekend we tackled the DIY plank wall, a project I have been looking forward to since I first spotted this image and declared it as my inspiration for the space.

How to build a plank wall is so very easy actually, and while this won’t serve a s a complete ‘how to’ {it happened so fast I didn’t get to take pictures} I still wanted to give you some tips on creating a wood plank wall in your own space. Grab your safety glasses!

Selecting the Wood

For this wall I selected 5.5 mm 4 foot by 8 foot underlayment, which is thin, shows the wood grain, and is lightweight. Our wall is 82 inches high by 66 1/2 wide so I got 2 sheets of the wood. While at Home Depot, I had them cut it at 66 inches, so it would be sure to fit the width of the wall but allow us room for error.  I also had them rip both boards down the center {since I knew how tall I wanted by boards, see below} If your wall is wider, you may need to figure out how to stagger the boards when you put them up, and where you would cut them, but this bathroom is pretty tiny, so thankfully one sheet fit width-wise.

I didn’t have them rip them at the home improvement store, since I was planning to do that at home with a friend’s table saw {and they use a rough cut saw – we needed smooth edges}. Although I know the stores will make as many cuts as you need, sometimes with a small fee.  We went home with 4 boards – 66″ x 24″ and 4 pieces of scrap at 30″ x 24″ as the leftovers.

Cutting the Wood

The wood underlayment we have was 4 feet high, so I made it easy on ourselves and decided to have 8 inch boards. When you get this type of wood, it’s easy to decide how wide you want them to be, so you can rip them however you’d like. I went the simple route and decided on 8 inches, that way we’d only have to rip each of the 24″ board 2 times.

First we practiced on the leftover pieces. Making sure not to measure out exactly 8 inches for the cut, since the width of the saw blade will not give you exact 8 inch cuts since we were cutting a 24″ board. We were fine with that, and knew we’d end up with some at 8 inches and some just under 8″. You dig my hipster safety glasses? I took this Instagram right when we were doing this part of the project.

It’s good to practice since it will give you a feel for the saw and how you have to move through the cut. Keep your hands FAR away from the blades. Ear plugs help too.

Painting the Plank Wood

I was super excited to do this part of the project because it meant using my HomeRight Finish Max Sprayer. I got this a few months ago and haven’t been able to use it yet, so I was chomping at the bit for our plank wall. I set up the planks in the backyard on 2 2×4 saw horses and got to painting. I’ll soon show you some tips about using the Finish Max in another post, but my one tip is to slow down your arm and do wide sweeps with the sprayer. Since this was my first time using it, things took a little it to get used to, but I really love what it can do and it’s so fast!

Since when these go up on the wall you will be able to see the edges of the boards, I wanted to be sure to paint them too. To do this I lined up a bunch of them, clamped them together so the edges were all event and rolled them quickly all at once. Pretty useful tip right? I waited until each dried, then did the other side of the board’s edge.

Then I got to painting. I watered down my paint a bit, which gave it a more transparent look. I had planned on painting all of these to be semi-gloss white so you wouldn’t see any of the wood through them, but once some dried we decided we liked the whitewashed look and decided to leave them as is. We even distressed them a bit on a walls, as you’ll see later. It was kind of cool that day so I’m glad my painting ended early.

Installing Plank Wood

After our boards were painted how we liked, it was time to install the plank wood wall. There are great tutorials out there on how to do this, Pretty Handy Girl did one here. Since I didn’t get a ton of pics of this part, tell Brittany I sent you.

To install the boards, we started at the top of the wall. Since our boards were the width of the wall minus half an inch, we just had to nail up each one by one. We did check to see that this first board was level and thankfully it was! A small miracle itself. We used a nail gun on the air compressor to attach the boards and nailed in 5 places across each top and bottom.

Since our boards were about 1/2 an inch too short for the wall, we wanted to make sure to center them. To make them even on one side, we used a piece of fiberboard {leftover from an Ikea dresser I think} to make an even space on the right side. I know some people use construction adhesive to glue their boards to the wall, but we didn’t want to so we just nailed them.

That’s what happens to my manicure when I stencil.

Then it didn’t matter what the spacing was on the left side since we knew we’d cover it up with trim. To make the spaces between the boards we used the skinny end of cedar shims by placing on on the right half and one on the left half of the boards in between them. We pushed the board up against the shims nice and snug then nailed.

Dan notched around the plumbing with the jig saw. We ended up with a 2 inch gap at the bottom of the wall, and cut a piece to fit in there so once we put the baseboard on, it would fit well. Since our wall was 82 inches high, we used 10 boards plus this 2 inch piece.

Finishing the Boards

Once we had all the boards nailed up on the wall, I wanted to make sure the paint looked like we wanted. I could see where the paint overlapped in parts so I ended up taking the sander to it. Often when I’m unhappy with a paint job I just sand it! Kind of like I did with my silver dresser. This ended up being a great idea since it gave the boards a nice modern rustic look that we were going for. I used 220 paper and a random orbital sander very lightly to wear the boards down a bit along the edges.

To finish off the right and left edges of the wall, we added a thin piece of wood trim, which I also painted to match. It ended up working perfectly, even though we had to notch it out a small bit by the one light switch.

And now I know these are not the most sexy after pictures {I’ll share those once we get the room done}, here is how our wall ended up. And I have to apologize for the dark lighting. As you know, DIY often happens at night and in the basement.

Over all, aside from cutting and painting, this project is super quick. It’s actually one of those that seems really intimidating at first, but is super easy to do. Plank Wall DIY – sound good for your next project? I’m already trying to think of where else we can install a plank wall in our house!

What do you think? Are you on board with the distressed look of the wood?

Think you’ll ever try a wood plank wall?

Here is where things are with the bathroom renovation list.

• Gut the whole space More on that here
• Fix the foundation wall More on that here
• Level the floor More on that here
• Install the subfloor More on that here
• Select paint and prime and paint the room More on that here
• Install lights
• Get plank wood, cut it, paint it, and install it
• Install the floor
• Figure out how to create a floor for the shower and install it
• Move plumbing in shower
• Tile the shower
• Install baseboards
• Install toilet
• Install vanity, sink and faucet
• Find and hang lights, mirror, art?
• Install the wall shelves
• Accessorize and decorate

P.S. I’m in Omaha, Nebraska this week for my last work trip. Keep up with me on Instagram here.