Whitney's Workshop: Crazy Kitchen: Part Two (ceiling details)

So on we went with putting the panels on the ceiling (with the help of two wonderful jack-y things we purchased at Harbor Freight. Let me tell anyone who might think of doing this. It's hard and no fun and even harder if you are a perfectionist (who me, perfectionist??)! Start by marking out your ceiling joists with a chalk line. We used only screws to attach but I would use glue and screws if I were to do it again to help prevent waves). Starting in one corner work your way to the other side while having a helper push out as much waviness as possible. The sides seams, on the beads, are fairly easy to match and look almost seamless if you take your time. But the butt joints, where ends meet, are impossible to make look good.

Side note; at some point in time, after taking out this weird dumb soffit, my husband insisted that we take out this other section of weird dumb soffit. It REALLY opened up the space but was very messy!

Once you have all your panels up you can fill screw holes and work on your seams (you probably want to countersink your screws and may need to use a countersink bit for this). We used spackle and it took a few coats (and is still not perfect but who cares? My perfectionism only lasted so long.). The screws holes are pretty easy and self explanatory; fill em, that's it. For the bead seams I stuffed some spackle in the seams and smoothed with my finger til it looked good. Pretty easy. Let it all dry and sand carefully (don't want to scratch your panels too much). Repeat as necessary.

Here we are after the first round of filling. You can also see that the joint on the beam has been planed, sanded, and filled.

The Beam: Fairly straightforward to do. This Ana link can help a lot. Ours is similar.

Then onto the trim boards. We first attached 1x3's along the entire perimeter. Then we used a 1x4 down the big ugly butt joint seam. Then placed another one equidistance on the other side. Then we filled those screw holes and it was time to paint!

Here is my sweet husband working hard on trim.

I chose to use a semi-gloss. I know I know. Semi gloss on the ceiling?! God Forbid! But it was what I wanted. I didn't want to have this beautiful but dull ceiling. And I am very happy with it. I used the off the shelf white Valspar from Lowes. It is worth the extra cost over the cheap-o stuff (trust me, I found out the hard and $$ way).