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.