FAUX PLANKED WALL DIY USING PLYWOOD

Are you planning a new planked wall project? Want to know how to DIY A faux plank wall on a TIGHT budget? See how we spent less than $50 to plank a bedroom wall and learn what not to do so you don’t make the same mistakes we did our first time around.

Recently my husband and I bought a gorgeous old home that was built in the year 1900. Of course we got an inspection on it before we bought it to make sure it was sound and the house wasn’t in need of any major repairs before we made an offer. To our surprise it was totally sound! The house was mainly in need of cosmetic repairs and since we got such a great deal on it we snatched it up decided we could tackle those on our own one project at a time. Our first project being a room that had 6 DIFFERENT prints of wallpaper on the walls. Because the house is so old, 120 years to be exact at the time I’m writing this post, nothing in the house aligns perfectly. We love the house but it drives my construction worker husband absolutely bat shit crazy that nothing is even. He likes walls that are square and I love all that old character!

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See how I easily removed the old wallpaper using just my steamer

Once we started pulling off the wallpaper we realized the true reason why there was so much wallpaper and so many different prints. The wallpaper was just a band aid for the big cracks in the walls and it looked like they just put any scrap piece they could find to cover the walls. Honestly we expected the walls to be in rough shape because it’s such an old house but we weren’t expecting it to be that bad. Really we needed to replace all of the walls in the room with drywall but we were on a time crunch and opted instead to replace 2 walls completely for now and apply a bigger band aid than wallpaper to the other two walls. We thought making faux plank walls would be the perfect thing to use on the other two walls for right now.

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One wall finish we chose was a faux plank wall. Working with a limited budget we knew we couldn’t opt for the premade planks you can buy at any home remodeling store or even this peel and stick wooden wall option. Instead we opted to buy a thin plywood and cut it ourselves.

We definitely made mistakes on this one but my hope is to share those with you so that you don’t make the same mistakes if you decide to do a faux plank wall too. Really it was because we didn’t fully prepare for this remodel. I honestly was just planning on taking off the wallpaper and before we knew it two walls were totally gone lol! So we had to finish what we started before my husband had to got out of town in two days for a job. Yeah…we were completely unprepared for this big project! But the good new is if we decide we want to change it later we can easily pop the planks off the wall and do something different.

Here’s how we made our affordable faux plank wall

First, I need to start off by saying this requires the use of power tools. If you are not comfortable with using power tools this project may not be for you. But it is a fairly simple project to tackle if you are just starting out using power tools. If you can cut a straight line and use a brad nailer you shouldn’t have too much trouble DIYing your own plank wood wall.

Like I said above we were working with a super short time frame. We had a weekend to get the bulk of this bedroom done and were working our butts off to meet that deadline. So we didn’t do things exactly perfect but at the end of the day we are overall happy with the outcome. And nothing is ever perfect so there’s that lol!

Here’s what we used to make our faux plank wall

• thin plywood, I believe we used 1/4” and purchased it from a local home improvement store

• circular saw

• miter saw

• jigsaw

• clamps

• brad nailer

• 2” brad nails

• pennies

• measuring tape

This is not the way it really should be done but to save time my husband stacked the plywood and cut them into strips that way. I wanted thicker planks so he cut them at 5” wide.

After he cut the strips I cut them down using my miter saw into smaller sections. I measured them anywhere from 6”-24” and looking back I would not have cut anything less than 12”. After I got them on the wall I realized the smaller ones just looked awful so I had to remove those sections and replace them.

Then I started attaching them to the wall starting from the bottom and working my way up. I used pennies as my spacers between my plank pieces. I have to say that worked out GREAT! You use the pennies just like you would any other spacer. Place them in between the wood planks so that you get the same even spacing between the planks.

I used my Ryobi brad nailer to nail the planks to the wall. We chose to use 2” brad nails so that it would hit the wood underneath from the lathe and plaster so they wouldn’t just fall off. And since the brad nails are not like a regular nail they come out of the wall easily if you decide you want to remove them later. This is also why we opted not to use any glue like I’ve seen on other tutorials. We didn’t want this to be a permanent fixture in the room, just a fun accent wall for now to cover the lather and plaster wall. Years down the road we will replace it with drywall but for now the faux plank wall is a perfect temporary fix.

Around the windows I had to cut custom pieces and I used my jigsaw for that. I am not a measuring kind of girl lol! It killed me to have to be exact with this and to use real measurements so that the pieces would come out right. Usually I eyeball my cuts and that’s that, it drives my husband nuts that I do this but it is what it is, I’m not a perfectionist lol!

Making our own faux plank wall saved us so much money! When we bought our plywood we paid $17 a sheet, a lot cheaper than any premade version. We bought 5 sheets total to redo 2 walls in this room and 5 plywood sheets covered it! Less than $100 to redo them. Granted we did have a lot more work to do but when you’re on a budget hard work is worth it to not have that extra money going out!

This was such a great option for us right now. It’s not as much work as drywall and definitely not as hideous as the wallpaper that had been on the walls. While it’s still technically a band aid it’s a much prettier band aid!

I hope this post helps you to DIY your own plank wall and learned what not to do with some of the mistakes we made DIYing our own plank wall.

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