The Best Stain for a Natural Wood Shiplap Wall

Yeeeehah, I’m bubbling stained shipboard wall happies. (If you’re just arriving, see how I installed that pine shiplap paneling, and how I stained it. Also – I think you’ll like how impacting the shiplap is in my dining room.)

After finishing the wall on Thursday after I showed you my progress, I cleaned up and let it sit for several days (for good drying measure before shoving my clean sheets into a sticky dark walnut wall). I’m relieved to say that the staining worked out after all. And happy to report that the whole project from beginning to end only cost $110. $100 for the shiplap, $10 for the stain. 

That whole hiccup with the stain not covering the wood filler really threw a wrench into my plans, and I even went as far as to pull the old can old gray paint up from the basement with plans to prime and paint the walls and pretend the staining fiasco never happened. I was also worried about the old stain sample areas showing through the dark walnut finish, so in an moment of desperation decided to add a second coat of stain, this time the sample of Jacobean, to the lighter areas.

To quote my favorite dweebs from The Big Bang Theory, Bazinga, it worked.

In places where I had tested the colors and experienced the wood filler discoloration the first time, it’s still faintly apparent that the stain didn’t adhere to the filler correctly, even though it’s better than it was when I first showed you what I was dealing with. Nothing a little strategically hung Frank Black poster can’t fix. Pretty Frank Black in its pretty dark brown IKEA Ribba Frame. Ooh, so happy. Pete saw the star (as Black Francis) in a concert last Thursday at a Buffalo venue so small it was practically just him and the band. And no, he didn’t tell him that I was vying to hang this poster over our bed. I can only imagine what kind of stalker list he’d have been on after that casual conversation.

The window and blinds now pop in a way that I envision my future dark-stained cedar-sided house exterior will shine, and I’m especially happy how the IKEA drawers that I inherited a little over a year ago stand out so nicely in the contrast of gray, dark wood, and low-rise bed.

You think that’s good?

I have another surprise. BAM.

This is where bedside table love begins. Bear with me people, I’m obscenely happy.

I’ve been on the lookout for the Harvey Lobster bedside tables since I originally saw them in the CB2 catalogue a few years ago. I even got thisclose to buying one when I caught it posted on Rochester’s Craigslist last year, but the seller wanted $80, and because I knew it originally would have only been $100 without taxes and shipping, I couldn’t justify the purchase at only a 20% discount.

I let the dream evaporate, bought a little white IKEA ODDA table on casters (half-priced at $25, also via Craigslist) that you saw in some of those previous bedroom pictures above, and paired it with my DIY-but-so-wanna-be-authentic West Elm papier-mache side table. And life was good.

That is, until last week when I saw this:

$60 each seemed more reasonable, considering but still more than I cared to pay for secondhand CB2. And there weren’t original photos from the seller, so I couldn’t be sure that their product was in great shape. Or even lobster, for that matter.

But I inquired anyways, asking uber-optimistically if the price was for the set or per piece (Woot! $60 for the set!) and if they were the original lobster color from CB2 (Yes! It was!) and getting in the thrifting spirit, asked if they’d take $50 for the pair meaning that my total payment would be 75% below retail (holding breath, holding breath, holding breath, yes! Yes, they would!). Oh-em-gee.

And so I ventured out to a dead end road to meet strangers in a never-before-trekked part of town (not joking) and brought my new babies home.

Sidenote: At a glance, that looks like a wicked shadow on the floor. It’s actually the sunroom floor that I just re-painted last week; you can catch up on the whole project right here if you missed it!

It’s really no surprise that I jumped at the lobster color versus holding out for the Carbon or Pool Blue options that are still sold at CB2; I’ve been wild for anything tomato-y, orangey-red for awhile and have been trying to infuse more of it as an overall accent color since the day I brought home the Energetic and Laughing Orange paints.

I’m obsessed with the way it looks with the rich wooden wall. Not to mention, it goes great with both the Frank Black and Pixies posters.

Also worth mentioning, the width of the Harvey Lobster is slightly narrower than the width of the ODDA bedside table, meaning that I was able to shift the bed slightly to the left and let it sit perfectly centered beneath the window. Stars do align.

Speaking of tomato-y, I’m up to my eyeballs over here:

Pete and I have eaten BLTs for lunch or dinner for the last 3.5 weeks. We’re going to be tomatoes by October.

If you want to see how the bedroom looks now that curtains are installed, click over to this post.