How To Plank A Ceiling & Build A Faux Beam

Our kitchen was featured in a post on 50 kitchen cabinet ideas!

While the girls and I were away in sunny Arizona, Jim was busy figuring out how to plank a ceiling and build a faux beam for our kitchen!

As I’ve said before, I’m a terrible DIY blogger. Try as I might, I’m just not good with step by step photos and instructions- But, nevertheless! Jim did come through with some details for those of you who might ask…so I’ve included them a little farther down in this post 🙂

(I’m just the designer. He’s the make it happener.) ((I was going to say executioner…but that ain’t right))

I don’t know about you, but I’m in LOVE with it!

Here are a couple of progress pictures…..

And Jim’s comments:

• Ceiling – 1”x6”x12’ tongue & groove, one person with a nail gun and rubber mallet took about seven hours to install, though with two people it probably would have only taken three.  You really need a second set of hands to help hold it in place.  The boards are always slightly warped or just bow from gravity, so it’s extremely difficult to hold a twelve foot piece of lumber and tap it together with a mallet.  Once together, it’s super easy to nail into place (DEFINITELY HAVE A NAIL GUN).  Put the nails through the tongue and then you won’t have any nail holes to fill later.  Painted two coats of paint White Dove.

• Beam – 1”x10”x12’ (3) pine common board but obviously the size of this board is just whatever you need to cover your beam.  Remember, a 1”x10” isn’t really 1” thick and 10” wide.  It’s ¾” thick and 9.25” wide.  Don’t ask me why…  Our original beam was not very straight measuring top to bottom, so I actually cut the side pieces of the beam to be about an inch and a half longer than needed.  Then I cut the third board to fit in between the side pieces.  I put one coat of stain on the boards, then used a nail gun and Courtney’s help to tack the sides onto the beam.  Then we carefully placed the middle section in the bottom, needing to take a mallet and tap out the sides in a few places to make it fit.  Starting in the middle, we made sure the middle part was flush and using the nail gun tacked it into place.  Then I worked towards each side, lifting the middle section up or down as needed to make sure it was flush and nailed it into place  There are some small gaps in a few places that I intend to fill with wood filler and then lightly re-stain.  In all, the beam took about an hour to measure and cut everything, thirty minutes to stain (since I let Abigail help!), waited about four hours for that to dry, then about an hour to wrestle it up and nail it in place.

And here are a few pictures of the beam up close, so you can really see what the ceiling looks like!

And here is a shot from our newly updated dining room…which will be getting it’s own set of posts (how to add shiplap for CHEAP + a full reveal!)  hopefully in the next few weeks!

And just for fun, here is where we started! This picture was taken on moving day(…or possibly the day after)

And here is our kitchen today!

So that is our kitchen! I think we are officially done in this room for quite a while now. We checked off most of the things on our 2017 house goals list for this room, so now we can focus on some other spaces for a while!

(Jim was going to surprise me by installing the IKEA farmhouse sink we had in our old kitchen because I LOVED it and miss it so much- but unfortunately it doesn’t fit in our current space. So, we’re keeping the sink we have!)

You can read some other kitchen related posts right here: the kitchen island, the corner cabinet, as is home tour, before and after home tour….or you can always search “kitchen” in the search bar over to the right OR click on the “Our Home” tab at the top of the page!