Tried shiplap in my 1920s bungalow and it fought back like crazy

I finally got around to putting shiplap in my living room last fall. The walls in my Chicago bungalow are SO out of square, nothing lined up right. I spent a full Saturday just trying to get the first row level and wrestling with gaps that kept appearing. Ended up having to scribe every single board to the old plaster, which added like 8 hours to the job. Lesson learned: never assume old houses have straight anything, even if it looks flat from across the room. Has anyone else dealt with wavy walls when doing wall paneling?

3 comments

3 Comments

cole_hall2mo ago

Used to think level walls were a given. Boy was I wrong.

cole_hall2mo ago

Wait, you mean you actually thought walls were supposed to be straight? That's adorable. I remember my first house, I put a shelf up and it looked like a drunk snake slithering across the wall. My grandpa came over, looked at it, and just said "well, at least it's not level, so it's character." That's when I learned that old houses don't have corners, they have suggestions of corners. Now I just tell people my pictures are "floating" on purpose. It's an art installation, really.

ray3242mo ago

I get where you're coming from, but I actually see it the other way. A slightly off-kilter wall can be charming in an old house for sure, but I've had too many bad experiences with stuff just rolling off the countertop. I had a tiny apartment where the whole floor slanted to one corner, and I lost a glass of water off the nightstand in the middle of the night once. That's not character, that's just frustrating. Level isn't about being fancy or modern, it's about stuff not falling over. I'd take a plumb, straight wall over a crooked one any day, even if it means painting over some old plaster.