New kitchen ceiling, day 1
Bill, our friend-of-a-friend contractor extraordinaire, who also did our new siding and mounted our iron shutters, started putting up the new beadboard ceiling in the kitchen today. We had to go with planks instead of large sheets due to the size of the room so that we wouldn’t have long, noticeable seams. By using planks, he can randomize the seams just like is typically done with wood flooring.
It really looks great so far. I can’t wait to see it once the crown moulding and new ceiling fan are up.
A few warnings if you’re considering this type of ceiling. We bought the 5/16 in., tongue and groove, double planks from the Big Orange Box instead of either the larger, less expensive 4x8 sheets or the much more expensive 3/4 in. thick single tongue and groove planks. We figured this would still give us the look we want, wouldn’t blow our budget, and would install easily and cleanly.
We were right on the first two counts. It looks great, and was very reasonably priced. However, there are some installation challenges, mostly stemming from lack of quality control in the product:
- The product comes in packages that contain several planks each. However, we found that the variation in the bead widths between packages is significant. It varied widely enough that we had to separate the planks into groups and use only planks from a single group in each row or else the beading would not line up.
- The tongues and grooves were very inconsistently milled. Some tongues were too thick to fit into some grooves, and some tongues were paper thin and snapped off easily. We ended up having to face nail most of the planks instead of nailing into the tongues to compensate.
I’d still recommend this stuff as a budget alternative to the thicker planks if the you’re doing a large area and the 4x8 sheets won’t work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment