House reno pics, soffit detail question. (w/pics)

[David F. Eisan]

Hello everyone,

I have not been posting much because I have been tied up with house renovations.

My old house (remember the white kitchen cabinets) sold in less than a day, so I guess no one minded the inconsistent reveal from the scribe strip I put up.

I had about 1 week to enjoy the old house before I started on the new one. The renovations here are extensive (to say the least!).

This was a perfectly good house in move in condition, that is, if you have

70's taste. Nice wall paper and shag carpet everywhere. Very little had been done to this house since it was built in 1975, exactly what I was looking for. The main floor was broken up into little rooms, a hallway, kitchen, living and dining room with a den behind the garage.

Katarina and I totally demolished the main floor. We took out two 20 yard dumpsters. All the interior walls on the main floor, all the old flooring and 95% of the cabinetry throughout the house.

This is what it looked like after a little demo,

temporary walls were built in place to support the second floor as the main load bearing wall was removed,

beam is huge. In order for it to be flush mounted, it had a flange welded onto the bottom of it to carry the second floor joists that used to rest on a 2x6 wall that also housed the all the air supplies and returns from the second floor.

the electrical from the interior walls has been moved or removed. The HVAC ducts have been rerouted to the outside walls and tucked into a soffit that runs around the main open room.

main question is how to deal with this soffit for paint and "orange peel" knocked down spray on texturing.

Different scenarios,

1) Treat the entire soffit as the ceiling and texture the side and bottom of it, paint the entire soffit white like the ceiling.

2) Texture just the bottom of the soffit, paint it white like the ceiling and paint vertical portion the same colour as the body of the room.

3) No texture on the soffit at all, paint the entire soffit the same colour as the room.

Being the wood guy I am, I would like to add some crown detail, but I don't know where or even if I should.

The floor and new staircase with be Jatoba. The kitchen cabinets will be cherry, you can see the rough in for the island beside the dishwasher. There are lots of new pot lights and rough ins for a fixture above the kitchen/dining table (in front of the new sliding door) and pendants above the island.

What are your ideas?

Thank you,

David.

Every Neighbourhood has one, in Mine I'm Him

[Dean H.]

"David F. Eisan" asked:

Maybe it's just me, but textured finishes always make me think there's a problem hidden underneath. Maybe the "problem" is just a low quality taping job, but maybe it's a leak or cracking. Spec builders love the stuff.

You are doing a nice job, it seems. Nothing to hide. I'd give it a nice crisp non-textured finish.

Just my $0.02 Keep up the good work!

-Dean

[Robert Bonomi]

What is not infrequently done is to put trim on the 'outside corner' of the soffit, treating the vertical part as part of the ceiling, and the horiz. part as part of the wall. Obviously, can't use traditional crown moulding, but you can use patterened/crarved flat stock to good effect.

Variation on a theme is to use wallpaper 'edging' on the soffet vertical. Flush to the bottom, with ceiling texturing above it if the edging isn't full height.

[Andrew Erickson]

I'd tend to avoid texturing stuff, since it's a lot easier to add texturing later than to remove it if you decide you don't like it. I'd probably not texture the ceiling, either, but that's my personal opinion. I'd rather have to repaint a flat surface when the time came than a textured one.

I'm currently living in an old (rented) post-and-beam farmhouse, and the beams around the ceiling in several areas extend out into the room, making what is essentially a soffit. They are generally painted to match the walls on both faces, and the ceiling proper starts above them. It looks pretty slick. If you were to do this, then any crown moulding would presumably need to go inside the soffit.

Another option is to paint the soffit a different tint altogether, basically treating it as a rather large and chunky crown moulding. Maybe you could also add some stenciling around the vertical bits of it to break it up and add interest.

(You're very brave to be asking us here instead of relying on SWMBO!)

[dadiOH]

Works OK but will visually lower ceiling making room height seem less. ____________

No. That could work if the ceilings were, say, 10' or more and the soffit height 2' but not as they are. Even then I'd treat the vertical side of the soffit as a separate entity, different from both ceiling AND wall. ____________

Works OK as long as room walls are untextured too. __________________

4) Treat both surfaces of the soffit the same but color differently from walls and ceiling...sort of a transitional detail twixt the two. For example, white ceiling, red walls, pink soffit. No, I'm not suggesting either red or pink, just an example to illustrate the suggestion :) 5) Treat vertical side of soffit as ceiling, bottom as wall. I think I like this one best. I might even put a molding at the bottom of the vertical soffit side and carry wall paint onto that molding. That would tend to visually extend walls upward and would make a great paint "stopper". _________________

You need to decide if the soffit is part of the ceilng or room walls. If treated as ceiling, it will tend to visually lower same, vice versa if treated as wall. My personal preferance would be to treat soffit as ceiling but NOT in this case as ceilings already seem low. _________________

The soffit is already sort of a huge crown. If you just gotta add more do it at ceiling/soffit. Putting it at wall/soffit will make walls even lower and - IMO - would look wierd. Really wierd. If I were going to put something at soffit/ceiling it would be small, probably a cove. ___________________

Randomly...

1. A bullnose corner bead on the soffits could have worked well as long as both vertical and horizontal surfaces were painted the same.

1. I suppose no room in soffit for wall washer pots? They could still be used for track lights - either on vertical or horizontal surface.

2. Think about what is going to happen when you hang upper cabinets under the soffit in the kitchen area. How much of the soffit bottom will be remain exposed? How are you going to treat it? Leave as is? Cover with molding to match cabinet? Other?