Shiplap’s In The Houze! How To Decorate With What You Love

Yo, Yo!  Shiplap’s in ‘da houze!  Put your hands up in the air like you just don’t care.

Okay, well let’s all care for just a minute, m’kay?

I can’t help it.  I live my life in songs and quotes from movies.  I totally think it is my husband’s fault…he always has a quote and makes reference to movies and songs continually.  Whenever I walk the beach in my mind I’m singing,  “The tide is high and I’m moving on…”  Who doesn’t love a little Blondie in their life?  It’ s just unfortunate that I live on an island so this has become somewhat of a curse for me.

If we want to be all technical and junk, this isn’t actually shiplap…it is the el cheapo version.  The Cousin Eddie of DIY shiplap walls, if you will…it’s planked quarter inch plywood.  Just like Cousin Eddie’s dickie, it’s the illusion without paying for the real thing.  I just hope my version looks a little better than Eddie’s fashion sense.

A dickey (alternatively written as dickie or dicky; sometimes known in American English as a tuxedo front or tux front) is a type of false shirt-front – originally known as a detachable bosom – designed to be worn with a tuxedo or men’s white tie, usually attached to the collar and then tucked into the waistcoat or …

Shiplap walls are all over Pinterest and of course, Chip and Joanna Gaines have made shiplap practically the norm.  I tend to resist things when they become too popular, sometimes even when it means sacrificing my own happiness.

The most popular perfume while I was in high school was Obsession.  I loved it…but would never have worn it because (a) it was recognizable and I didn’t want to smell like something people could identify (conversely, that is so much better than smelling like something people can’t identify…just sayin’) and (b) my friend K.J. wore it and I would’ve rather died than copy someone else.  So I’ve never bought that perfume.

Ridiculous right? Even though I loved the look of shiplap I told myself I wouldn’t do it because it’s been done so much.  I dug my heels in, until I recently woke up.  When did the criteria for a good idea become an original idea?  I had a professor who often said, “If you want a new idea, go read an old book”.  Truer words have never been spoken.

Shiplap may seem like it is a new idea and everyone is using it…but actually, and you may already know this, it’s been around for a long time.  It is just part of the ebb and flow of generational design.  My parents both grew up on dairy farms in Wisconsin and when my mother saw shiplap become popular she laughed.   She said many of the rooms in the farmhouse, while she was growing up, had exposed shiplap.  The rooms where company would be entertained had nice plaster walls and as the family could afford it, all the walls were finished, covering up the shiplap.  Non-shiplap walls were a sign that you were doing pretty well financially.

I’m here to say, jump on the bandwagon or make your own path.  We are living in a period of time where anything goes in terms of design.

If you want a 1980’s Miami Vice living room complete with pastel mauve furniture it can be yours.

If you want an English cottage bedroom complete with floral chintz wallpaper it can be yours.

If you want an over the top glam dining room complete with cheetah print chairs and bright pink curtains it can be yours.

Make your home a reflection of what you love whether everyone’s doing it or no one is doing it.  Who cares what is “in” or “out”?  There are no home décor police.  Many of us have lived our lives in “Resale Land”.

Seriously, what is the fun of owning a home if you are constantly making home décor decisions based upon what some fictitious future buyer will want?  You could live your whole life picking out things for her and denying your own aesthetic.

Besides, you may think you have kept everything so neutral and perfect and every future buyer will love what you have done.  Not true.  They’ll want to change it all anyway.

The big lesson for today?  Do what you love.  Make your home a reflection of you.  Pick your colors.  Pic k your fabrics.  Pick your floors, walls, etc…  Be you!

I’m off to buy more Cousin Eddie shiplap.  If you see me in the local Home Depot, I’ll be the one with white paint smear on my arm wafting the smell of Obsession singing “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” in my head.

Um diddle, diddle diddle, um diddle ay