This is part three in our series on building a mantle for an electric fireplace insert and TV wall.
The next thing we did was to center and attach the TV mount above the fireplace. I then ran four 2″ x 1″ wood strips up the wall making sure to secure them into the block behind the drywall. If you have frame construction make sure you use a stud finder and secure them into a stud to support the shiplap wall. This served two purposes. It gave me an easy place to attach the ship lap boards to and it gave me room to run all of the tv cables behind the boards. If you don’t want to build a ship lap wall you can use a TV cable hiding system.
I could have made the shiplap boards on a table saw with a dado blade but I found some good quality pre-made ship lap boards at the local big box hardware store. They were a little more expensive than making it myself but they were good quality and ready to go. I primed and painted the boards and started nailing them up one at a time. Around the TV insert I left enough room to be able to reach back behind it if needed while still making sure you wouldn’t see the gap from the sides.
I took the shiplap all the way to the ceiling and to finish it off I used the same upside down floor molding I used in the mantle to tie everything together. Down the sides I used a piece of corner-ninety to cover the edges of the boards.
