Wood Ceiling Project

I finally finished my wood ceiling renovation and I'm ready to show it off. We installed 6 inch tongue and groove, butt joint, clear Douglas Fir on the ceiling of our living room to create a mid century modern look and vibe.

This was a project that I meant to start and finish back in early August but it got pushed back and back and back for many different reasons. Firstly, we had a very difficult time sourcing the wood we needed.

I would never have guessed that simply wanting each board to be the same length would be such a problem.

When we did finally source the material the supplier told us that delivery time would be 4-6 weeks. After hearing that I switched gears and started my laundry room renovation instead, a project that took me 2-3 months to complete, much longer than I anticipated.

In the end, the wood ended up being delivered in 2 weeks though, and that created a minor fiasco. Suddenly I was under the gun to cut the 14 foot boards in half so that they could be stored in our garage until I was able to begin the project.

It wasn't until months later that we were finally ready.

My wife was a lot of help with this job in that she spent an entire weekend and beyond sanding each board smooth.

Then we tested out some various stains and she put two coats on each board.

We liked a natural stain stain the best because it kept the color of the boards basically the same but it brought out the grain, making them pop a little. Waiting as long as we did made the staining process significantly more challenging. The weather had turned cold with intermittent bad weather so we could no longer stain them in our driveway.

We set up saw horses in our garage and my wife stained them in there. Even with the garage door open and her wearing a good respirator, the fumes of the stain were pretty terrible. On day 2 or 3 of staining for an hour she came inside feeling very nauseous, which was not a good sign and meant that some of the fumes were definitely making their way through the mask. Just a bit of mild poisoning right??...😵‍💫

After the boards were stained my father in law and I started installing them on the ceiling.

We found the ceiling joists by drilling small holes in the drywall to find them and then marking them with a chalk line.

We nailed the boards in on the tongue where the joists were located and on the ends to hide the nails.

The boards didn't fit 100% perfectly so we finished them off with trim that is similar to the trim used around our other wall panels.

I couldn't find the exact same style of trim but my wife picked out a verson that is pretty close. I stained them to match the existing as best I could and they came out pretty close in the end.

You can't really tell the difference unless you look closely and inspect them.

The ceiling has 3 Bays in total and we completed two of them in a day. The third bay posed a major challenge because it hangs out over the stairs making it impossible to reach the ceiling there. It took some creative problem solving to figure that out but a few weeks later we got it done with the help of my father in law again, and my wife and her brother. We set up a platform on the stair railing and a tall ladder and had someone holding the ladder at all times when my father in law was on the platform.

We called the space over the stairs the "death zone" while we were working, because falling from that space meant a guaranteed injury or even death if things went very badly... *laughs nervously 😅.

I had originally said that I would be the one to install the boards over the death zone but when I climbed the ladder in the begining my father in law was chirping me within the first 30 seconds saying that I'm moving too slowly and that he should be the one on the ladder. I wasn't going to insist that I do it if it meant that someone was going to be rushing me the entire time. I felt that it was a situation which could easily turn into a disaster. I'm at the point in my life that I realize that I'm not invincible and would rather air on the side of caution and be safe then take unnecessary risks that could lead to injury. I'm risk adverse and safety oriented in other words. He did do an awesome job on the platform and did work very quickly and comfortably so it was probably the right decision in the end.

The prework for the project took quite a while but installing the boards only took two full days to complete.

The ceiling has a different look depending on the time of day and whether its in the natural light or the warmer ceiling lights. The pictures actually give a pretty good representation of what it really looks like.

The flooring on the other hand does not look at all like it does in the photos. The lighting and the camera make it look yellow, like a golden oak, like in the photo above. Really, they are more of a reddish-brown color (red oak).

The photo above is close but the one below is the best representation of the actual color of the floor.

My wife and I both really like how the ceiling turned out but one area that we don't agree on is the existing wall panels. She really likes them and wants to keep them but I don't think they match the look that we are trying to achieve. They are not mid century modern in my opinion so they just don't fit. We also have the same panels in our office library room so we have them elsewhere that we won't take down.

So she wants to keep them and I want to change them to walnut panels that are more in line with a MCM style. Its been a point of contention between us.

What do you think? About the panels - keep them as is or change them to mid century modern? And what do you think about the ceiling? Let me know in the comments.