A Little Cover Up

You may have noticed while we were running wire through the ceiling of my home office that the ceiling is pretty ugly.

Those same ceiling boards extend into the verandah/sleepout area, and are threatening to come crashing down at some stage if we don't take action.

In gazing at both ceilings trying to figure out how to make them more attractive without having to completely replace them, I had a brainwave.

This is our lounge room ceiling, just nearby. Please ignore the ugly splotches and peeling paint. We need to pay it some attention too. Butwhat it does have is some thin boards dividing the ceiling into sections, and probably covering seams in the ceiling boards.

I figured we could do the same thing with the office ceiling!

We drew up a plan that would not only cover up the seams between the four boards in the office ceiling, but divide those sections up a bit too. Here's what we came up with.

We measured the exact length that each of our timber pieces would need to be, since we've learned not to assume that anything in this house is perfectly square or straight.

We made a trip to Bunnings and bought ourselves some strips of pine, and cut them to the right lengths.

And pre-drilled where we would screw them into the ceiling, since it's a lot easier to do that when they're at ground-level rather than above your head!

Allie supervised sleepily.

And then came the exciting moment when the first board went up.

And in what seemed like virtually no time, the rest of the boards joined it.

Tom was careful to make sure that each board looked straight once it was up there, by eyeballing it.

And just like that, our ugly ceiling moved up a bit in the world. I won't say it's less ugly yet with the two-tone look, but at least we can't see those horrible seams anymore!

Next came the cornices...

And then it was my turn to putty up all of the screw heads (which we'd deliberately counter-sunk into the timber so they'd be invisible after a bit of puttying).

And then Tom sanded the putty back...

And Daniel started on the undercoat. Already looking loads better with the raw timber disappearing!

We did have one problem. Right near where the wiring for our new chandelier hangs out of the ceiling, the original paint on the ceiling was peeling. You can just see the two splotches where the level of the paint differs in this shot.

A couple of coats of paint didn't help that situation, so I decided that there was nothing for it but to whip out the putty again.

After an undercoat, it looked like this. The dark putty was showing through, meaning it wasn't much of an improvement!

It took three coats of ceiling paint after the undercoat to make it look seamless. Definitely worth the effort, though! I would probably recommend white-coloured putty in future.

And there you have it! Our new and improved home office ceiling!

If you've got eagle eyes, you may have spotted my new chandelier sitting on the top shelf there. Here's a closer look. Can't wait to get him installed!

So how about a before and after?

Before...

After!

Much better!!! We're getting close to a completed room!