When we did an addition on our house, we wanted to have a “feature wall” aspect of the front exterior as opposed to just stucco throughout. Ipe (pronounced ee-pay) is a Brazilian hardwood known for its extreme hardness and density.

I had some 16-foot boards custom milled in tongue and groove with a 1/4 inch reveal to create a shiplap-like look. First I put up 1/2 plywood furrow strips and vents to allow for airflow behind the siding. I used stainless steel screws to mount the bottom boards on each wall, and then used blind nails on the tongue of each successive board up to the top. The wood is so dense that I had to pre-drill every nail hole (a massive pain). We wanted a clean look so I joined the two walls with simple miters and ran the boards right under the window frames.

I put screws in the top boards to hold everything together, and then added 2 inch vertical frame pieces on the ends. Finally, since our driveway slopes down I added extra pieces at the bottom cut at an angle to match the driveway slope. I filled all the screw holes with plugs I cut from the offcuts (somehow I always find a way to use the Shaper), sanded everything (twice because I got unexpected rain splatter the night after the first) and finished with Messmer’s UV Plus, which will need to go on every 6 months.

A lot of work for a little feature wall, but we really love how it looks! This was a new kind of project for me and a little scary doing something on the exterior of our house, but I feel great about how it turned out.