My wife and I are about to start building a home in the country. We want to use tongue and groove ceilings in several rooms. Where is the best place to buy t & g? Are their choices of wood, texture, finishes, etc? We want something that looks like a distressed pine. Is that possible. Any suggestions of where to buy where we can look at choices would be appreciated.
If you're in a metro area, go to a good lumber yard--they'll have a large supply either on hand or, certainly easily available. Smaller architectural millwork shops may be quite flexible on making anything you want reasonably as well. Look at some mag's like Fine Homebuilding, etc., for a number of upper-end mills and ideas.
Another thing to keep in mind particularly if you're doing the work yourself so labor costs aren't as much a factor--buying a lesser grade can save big bucks at the expense of some additional waste and time in trimming, etc. Depending on the look desired, a lot of defects may, in fact, become "character"...
Knotty pine can get pretty busy on a ceiling. Your local sawmill should have some samples and options for you. Please, please, please do yourself a favor and finish the boards _before_ you put them up. Been thre, done that. It looks fantastic but my neck wasn't the same for months because we finished after it was up.
Grade 2 might be a starting point to look at. Depends on what you like the look of. Keep in mind it'll yellow/darken no matter what finish you put on it. I love how it looks, though.
Dave Hinz
Most homecenters/lumberyards will have 3/8"x3 1/2" pine "beadboard" available. Keep in mind, the boards will need some expansion/contraction room around the edges, like wood floor does, so think about choosing a crown moulding or other type of moulding that matches to go around the walls and cover the edges. Prefinish before installing and touch up if necessary.
Funny thing - I spent most of the day today putting a painted poplar beadboard ceiling on an exterior porch *back* up today. The boards apparently were delivered to the job, carried into the house where the painters primed only the face, and some carpenters installed it by nailing through the tongue (like hardwood flooring.) with finish nails. Well, after several weeks of rainy weather, the boards swelled up, buckling the boards and actually causing many of them to fall from the ceiling. After numbering and removing the remaining boards, I had the painters prime *both* sides. Myself and another carpenter reinstalled the ceiling the "right way" and completed the job with one extra row of the original boards leftover. This means that the boards, in all the rainy weather, swelled almost 3" across the 11 ft. width!
Moral to the story- let the wood acclimate a couple of weeks -preferably in the room in which it will be installed if possible- before finishing and installing. Have fun --dave
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 06:09:47 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@NOSPAMjuno.com wrote (in article ):
I did my dining room and kitchen in HD 4" spruce. It comes with a "rough" and smooth side. I used a sprayer and water-based poly before installing. A buddy used aspen in a similar size. Very light colored. Looks great on his walls.
-Bruce
Deja vu. The first house my husband and I bought had a living room with knotty pine paneling (tongue and groove 1x8 boards). On the walls and on the ceilings with ceilings 6-1/2 feet tall. I hated it within six months. The walls would have been okay, or the ceiling, but not all. Fortunately we lived there only two years, then to a house with 9-1/2-foot ceilings, lathe and plaster painted a light color - such a pleasant change. From our experience, I'd say be very careful what you put on the ceiling; it's with you a long, long time.
Of course, the bathroom was battleship gray, all of it, likely because they bought WWII surplus paint at the shipyards! (Note, I said "was" cuz that was easily changed, even though that room was also tongue and groove . . . lumber country.) The bathroom was painted immediately, but I simply could not bear to paint over that beautiful pine though we personally hated it. There is just something about painting over fine wood that goes against everything in my nature. We often wished they had paneled only one wall, that would have been truly enjoyable, but four walls and the ceiling? Too much, too small a room; in a lofted room, it would have worked.
Good luck on whatever decisions and choices you make. Enjoy.
Glenna
Glenna,
To each their own... :) My wife and I went to great effort and expense to install T&G cedar ceilings throughout our house, and our master suite has T&G pine installed vertically on the walls. We absolutely love it!
We have visited many cabins and cottages over the years that had wood ceilings and/or walls, and really wanted that look in our home. For us, there was no other choice.
Wood has a warmth and depth that can never be achieved with drywall or the stupid "popcorn" or "textured" ceilings.
We put drywall on the majority of the walls in the house, mostly because of the cheaper cost, but also to allow the flexibility of changing the room colors. But, the wood ceilings go well in all the rooms, regardless of the wall colors.
We cringe when we think some other family will move in years from now and paint our nice wood ceilings white, or whatever the current trend is. Or worse yet, cover it all with drywall and spray on a popcorn ceiling. :)
Anthony
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