November 22, 2013

Living Room Ceiling, FINALLY Done

If we EVER again consider buying a house with a vaulted ceiling, I hope someone does an intervention.

But now it's done and we are that much closer to getting flooring installed.

To recap, we originally had railroad track beams (fake beams) running the length of the ceiling. We always thought we'd put stained wood on the ceiling, but with a wood floor, it was just too dark. So we opted for side beams.

First, we (as in Hubby), pulled the bottom board of the beams off the ceiling. They were originally constructed like this:



There was a one inch lip on each side, which did nothing but collect dust and provide spiders a place to live. Plus, it was hard to paint the ceiling around it. So Hubby trimmed them to be flush with the sides, not an easy task as one of the "beams" was bowed badly. While the bottom was off, I refinished the sides of the beams. By the time I finished, I was almost comfortable working on the scaffold, but a rail on both sides would have been handy. I refinished the bottom piece in the garage before we put it back up.

Then we looked at a lot of pictures of similar ceilings with side beams and Hubby thought it would look best with two smaller beams on each side and the center. But it had an unfinished look to me, like the ends were dangling, and I coerced talked him into putting two more on each side to anchor each end. We thought that would all be work that could be done on the ground, but all the nail holes had to be filled and then a final finish coat, so my scaffold work continued.

Then a little touch up paint on the ceiling and we were ready to paint the walls. I wanted to go with a blue gray, but it just didn't look good, so we went with a trusted neutral, Antique White.

There is a little trim work to be done, plus the baseboard after the flooring is installed, and then comes the fun part: decorating.

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10 comments:

  1. Nice! I love the height of your ceiling.

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    1. Thank you. The ceiling height is impressive, but it sure makes the house cold in winter. And we can only paint it when we borrow a scaffold. My new limit for ceilings is 10 feet.

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  2. Very nice - I don't like to work on scaffolding either: I think climbing up is the worse part of it.

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    1. Thank you. I figured out that it is easier to put a 6' step ladder bedside the scaffold to get on it rather than climb the end of the scaffold. When I used this same scaffold to paint the living room in 2002, I could climb it easily, but I climbed it one time this time and knew I had to find a better way. Dh used the step ladder too. He thought it was much easier too.

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  3. Great job! One I know you are glad to be finished with.

    Have a great weekend and a wonderful Thanksgiving.

    FlowerLady

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  4. Looks great! Hope the rest goes fast so you can get to the fun part.

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  5. Whew, that looks like it was quite the project! I bet you're ecstatic that it's done and looks much better than the railroad track beams. I hope you rewarded yourself with a glass of wine or something, now that you're done with the scaffolding work.

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