DIY Wood Plank Ceilings In 5 Simple Steps

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We’ve been hard at work on a basement finish for the last couple of months for a super fun family!

When they asked for a wood plank panel ceiling, we knew they were going to be fun.

We love adding details to ceilings because often they are the first thing to get taken off the must-have list because of the budget. So when a client is on board, we’re pumped!

And this past week the ceiling went up and we were one board short. Womp, womp. So our first advice when starting this DIY project is to measure twice. Ha!

There are a lot of different material options when it comes to wood planks. When you head into your home improvement store, prepare yourself for material overload.

Try to have a list and source the look for your inspiration before heading to pick up your materials. We’ve done shiplap, bead-board, paneling, and tongue and groove when it comes to wood plank ceilings or walls, and all work just as well as the other. 

For this project we used Dakota™ Prefinished Bourbon Shiplap (1/2″ x 7-1/4″ x 8′).

1. Get Materials:

• Tongue and Groove Wood Planks
• Hammer
• Liquid Nails, Construction Adhesive
• Nail Gun & Nails
• Saw
• Tape Measure
• Jig Saw
• Pencil

2. Measure & Cut

First, you want to determine which way you’re going to run your planks. We recommend running them across your joists so that you can be sure to hit a stud every few feet when you nail in the planks.

Then, lay out your design and determine how many planks you’ll need and what size to cut them all down. For this area, we aren’t going to use any crown molding along the edges so, we wanted to make sure to cut the planks tight into the ceiling nook.

We cut the planks as we went one by one.

There may be times when you’ll have to cut around fixtures like we had to. To do this, hold your board up, and with a pencil mark the width of the hole and measure the depth.

Then using a jig saw cut the hole out of the board.

3. Glue

Once your plank is cut down, using your construction adhesive give the back of your boards a good coat of glue. We went through four of these cans throughout this project.

4. Install Planks and Hammer in Tight

This isn’t a project you’ll be able to do solo, you’ll want a helping hand! With two of us and each of us using our own ladder, we first put my end up onto the ceiling, and then Jamie squeezed his end in.

While one of us held one side the other one of us hammered in the planks into the groove of the other.

We cut off a small piece of the flooring to use to hammer in the planks, so we didn’t ruin the planks going up on the wall.

5. Nail into Place

Once we got the wood planks set, we nailed them into place. We knew where the studs were from the drywall nails so it made it pretty convenient to know where to nail the boards.

We nailed two to three per stud. If you’re not sure where your studs are, you’ll probably want a stud finder to know where to nail the boards.

The awesome thing about doing tongue and groove is that you can nail it onto the ledge instead of on top of the wood planks where it’s visible. If you don’t use tongue and groove boards, then you’ll want to get wood filler and fill in all of your nail holes.

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