Nashville has just experienced a crazy bout of cold weather.  Although it seems to finally be passing, I’ve been dreaming about the lake house for just about 2 weeks straight.  I put together this idea book on a new website that I found.  Houzz is totally an idea thief’s dream … you have got to check it out if you love looking at pics of interiors.

As I studied the photos that I loved as lake inspiration, a theme emerged.  Can you figure it out?

I’ve decided that nothing says “lake” like a painted plank.  It’s great for walls, floors, and porch ceilings.  The texture and interest that it adds makes a place instantly feel like it has a history … WAAAAAY more exciting than drywall.

But remembering that we are aiming to build our lake house on a major budget, will we be able to achieve such style?  I let my fingers do the walking (or typing as it were) and enlisted my trusty friend Google to see what I can learn.

After several faulty clicks, I finally landed on this gorgeous link from Southern Living.  Here I learned that pine planked walls can also be called Shiplap.  Ok 2 useful bits of information: pine and shiplap.

Additional searching brought me to this video from my old friend Bob Vila.  Bob’s got a useful albeit maybe  a little boring video on installing Shiplap where he mentions that it costs under $25 for a 4×8 sheet of paneling – or under $0.70/board.  This still seems a bit pricey to me consider that drywall costs between $9-$15 per 4×8 sheet.  So maybe we reserve the shiplap for interest up to chair rail height or maybe just for a single wall in a room like a bathroom.

Can’t wait to get our plank on!