Fireplace Accent Wall Fail – Learn from our mistakes!

Where do I even begin? About a month ago I was sick and stuck on the couch, which led me to the brilliant idea of redoing our fireplace wall because why not, right? We always have some sort of project going and it had been a minute since our last one… So I talked my husband into getting right to work! Not like I have to really talk him into it anymore. Little did we know we would spend an entire week+ and end up with a fireplace accent wall fail. Learn from our mistakes! I’m going to share them all with you here so you don’t have to go through the sadness of tearing down a project you worked so hard on.

Let me first start off by saying, this wasn’t our first time putting up shiplap. One of the first projects we did in this house was our faux shiplap wall in our kitchen.

You can go check out the whole post HERE!

It turned out exactly like I imagined it to and it truly made such a huge impact on the overall look of our kitchen. With that being said, we had no hesitation using the same method for our fireplace wall. The only difference was that we wanted to do a chevron pattern instead of just straight across. This method works really well if you are planning on painting your wall white or any other light color. Dark colors, on the other hand, just don’t work well. Lesson learned the hard way!

BEFORE & AFTER

After we got all of the boards up I was really excited because it looked amazing! However, after we painted about half of it I started realizing that you could no longer really see the individual boards. They just kind of got lost in all of the dark paint. It basically looked like we had just painted a black wall, which was not what I wanted at all.

Check out my inspiration pic HERE.

What ours looked like:

If you want to see the whole process and how we created this accent wall, go check it out over on my Youtube channel!

There are a lot of things that I think we could have done differently. So here are some suggestions!

Using Underlayment

If you really wanted to use the underlayment you still might be able to if you change a couple of things:

1. Paint the wall first in the same color you plan to paint the boards.
2. Space out the boards more than just with a quarter. You can use nickels, which are thicker. You can even stack 2 or 3 of them together using tape or glue.
3. I know the sides of these boards are thin, but I still noticed the cracks needed to be painted. This is extremely hard to do after the boards are up. Remember you are using a dark color so the contrast between the colors is going to be a lot different then if you were using a light color.

_{**Side-note – please keep in mind that these are just suggestions. I have not tested other ways to use the underlayment for this project, so I am not 100% sure that any of these suggestions will change the outcome. My biggest tip would be to test out different methods with a couple of boards and a small spot of paint on the wall to see which one works the best in your space to accomplish the look you are going for.}

Using Thicker Boards

If you are okay using a different type of material, here are a few of my thoughts:

1. When it comes to using a dark color I think one of the best ways to create a distinct line between each board is to create a shadow. Keep in mind that this depends a lot on the light in your space.
2. Use thicker boards and put a bigger space (but not too big) between each one. You can do this by gluing quarters or nickels together.
3. Use actual shiplap boards or create your own using a router.

Experiment with these different options until you create the look you want! Remember every space is different.

In the end…

We decided to tear it all down and completely start over. Our poor wall took a beating. A true fireplace accent wall fail. Absolutely heartbreaking! I’ll be honest with y’all I cried and I felt so incredibly bad that my husband had to spend an entire day tearing it down, but he is a saint. He didn’t hesitate to do it because he knew it wasn’t what I wanted. I’m super thankful for him, for sure!

What we plan to do now:

Fortunately, we had some thicker boards laying around in our garage for a different project we ended up not doing. They were the perfect size for this project! Love when that happens. Before we ever started, we experimented with a couple of the boards to see which method would work best for what I wanted. My husband cut a couple of boards for me, I painted them + part of our wall. One side of the boards was routed to use like shiplap and the other side was just your normal board. We held them up on our wall both ways – using it like shiplap and then just using them like regular boards, but putting a space between them.

I personally like the way it looks using just regular boards but spaced out. I think it creates a really nice shadowed line that allows you to truly see the chevron design. Plus in all honesty, since we already had boards, it was the easier option. We would just have to measure and cut the boards instead of also needing to use the router to create shiplap. Work smarter, not harder!

We are currently in the process of putting the new boards up, so here’s to hoping we made the right choice! Stay tuned for an update. I’ll be writing another blog post all about our experience with this new method.

I hope that our fireplace accent wall fail will help you with your own project and save you a little bit of heart ache!