We finished the ceiling! After much deliberation and research on how best to secure the wood to the frame, we wound up going with plain old screws. The hardware isn’t as visible as we had feared, and gives us some peace of mind that the wood hanging above our heads will remain there.
We started just above the starboard windows, working our way up one row at a time. The tongue and groove boards made it so we didn’t have to screw into each and every intersection with a rib. There isn’t a pattern to the screws, we just put them where they were needed.
There is, however, a pattern to the boards. It’s too subtle to see, but each row of boards starts one rib back from the one before it. It repeats four times across the ceiling.
We added insulation above us as we went along. We mostly reused the stock batting that was there when we took the ceiling down, and added new batting where it was needed. It’s hard to express how happy we are to have most of the insulating behind us.
We still need to trim the two rows immediately above the windows, but the bulk of the work is done. It was a straightforward and simple process that took a week or so to complete. And as you can see, totally worth it.
John Starrett says
John and Nishi,
The ceiling looks fantastic. Can’t wait to see it in person. Congratulations!
John
nikki says
Dudes! This looks incredible!!! Drive ‘er out to Cali when you’re done!!!!
Erin says
could you go into more detail w what materials were used and how you staggered them?
John says
Not too much – there isn’t much more to say. Each row of boards starts one rib back from the one before it. So if we started the first row at the very first rib, we started the next row up at the second rib, etc.
The material is 1/4″ tongue and groove wainscoting from Lowe’s. They come in packs of 6, and are very easy to work with. That said, we did need to return a lot of them due to damage or massive knot holes, but Lowe’s was very cool about it.