ORC Week 4

ORC Week 4DIY Coffered Ceiling Part 2: Tongue and Groove Ceiling Installation

Last week we got the new recessed lighting installed and prepped the beams for the coffered ceiling. This week is all about tongue and groove. We looked at A LOT of inspo pics and in the end I fell in love with this look here:

I loved the warmth of the wood tongue and groove contrasted with the bright white of the coffered beams. Depending on the lighting fixtures, furniture, textiles, etc you can change the feel from beach casual to warm elegance. For the space in our living room, I want a cozy vibe without making it too dark. The white oak floors are already creating a huge improvement in the feel of the room so adding tongue and groove will mirror that on the 5th wall. 

I considered a lot of options, but in the end went with beetle kill pine that we had originally intended for Jaxson’s nursery overhaul from our first ORC experience. We bought enough then for his room, but after pivoting to a Bob Ross moment of painting clouds on the ceiling, these boards have sat in our mini lumberyard of a garage for over a year. We got the beams from a local lumber supplier, Rocky Mountain Forest Products. A great company based in Colorado that has really high quality wood and decking products, amazing prices, and the best customer service. After sitting in our garage all this time, we pulled out a few boards to see how they would look with our current color scheme and loved it! The boards are beetle kill pine, which means it is lumber harvested from pine trees that were killed by a specific beetle. Multiple areas of pine forests across North America were hit hard by this beetle resulting in a lot of dead pine trees that, if not harvested for lumber, become fuel for forest fires. The beetles that infest these trees, lay their eggs, resulting in a blockage of water and nutrients up the tree causing it to slowly die off. The beetles introduce a fungus into the tree that causes the wood to have a blue hue woven through the wood grain. The look of the wood is truly striking. Since every piece is different it creates a unique look for a ceiling, wall, or floor installation. 

Before even starting with this installation process, we had to figure out if we were going to finish and seal these boards or leave them au naturale.  When we talked to our rep at Rocky Mountain Forest products he showed us a couple of areas where they had done installation without any sealer and it looked beautiful. The wood on these boards has such a light warm base of pine with a gray blue tinting to it that I really wanted to preserve that color profile without potentially ruining it with a sealer. The sealers tend to turn Pine very yellow over time and so you would also lose the unique blue color that comes through as a result of the beetle kill. Our rep showed Jake some examples of people who had sealed or stained their beetle kill Pine and it really lost the tones of the gray blue from the beetle kill and the pine looked very yellow. We already have enough yellow coming through from our white oak floors so we opted to not finish these boards. Another factor is that these boards are in our living room and there's no risk for exposure to the elements like near a bathroom or a kitchen where they need to be protected and sealed. If these were going into a kitchen or another place where there was a lot of moisture then we would have definitely sealed them, but in that situation we probably would have gone with another wood species.

Last week we prepped the room and divided it into nine relatively even squares using a chalk line and a stud finder to plan out our grid. When we had everything lined up with our studs we installed two by fours to be used as braces for our upcoming beam installation. Now that we had our grid we could then figure out the dimensions for our pine boards and do batch cuts of the boards for each square.

 This was the first time that I've done tongue and groove and it was honestly one of the easiest installations I've ever done. There definitely was a difference in the quality of the tongue and groove product that we got from Rocky Mountain Forest products compared to some weird pieces picked up along the way from other sources. At some places like Home Depot and Lowe's they'll have two sided boards or one side is tongue and groove and then the other side has been routed to be installed as a shiplap edge. The difference is the tongue and groove has a more angled Edge and so it looks a little softer in the installation whereas shiplap has a square Edge to it that looks harder next to the adjacent board. I personally like the look of tongue and groove more than shiplap.

•  We started with a square closest to our focal wall and gave ourselves a little Gap next to the wall itself before kneeling in our first board. You'll see on our videos that there are gaps around the whole square to allow for crown the upcoming beams and trim that will close that gap. Essentially we don't need to waste supplies on an area that's going to end up being hidden. Take this into account when you're planning your own project on how to save costs. With that in mind, we oriented the board so the groove side was closest to the wall and the tongue side was your leading edge. We nailed into the face of the groove side closest to the wall, making sure to hit the studs. From there we nailed at a 45 angle into the beveled edge next to the groove into our studs. I highly recommend that when you're doing this you mark out all of your studs ahead of time so it makes it really easy to put up multiple boards quickly. from there you slide the next board onto the tongue of the board preceding it. Some people prefer to nail the face side for added security but this is not necessary with a tongue and groove installation instead you just nail at the beveled edge of your groove when you're doing your installation. You can continue this until you've completed your space. If you're doing a larger area depending on the look that you want, you want to stagger your joints and your boards to make it look more random. In our case because we were separating this out as a grid, I wanted all of the boards even and consistent to create a cohesive look. It only took a few hours for us to do several of the squares. We attacked the squares that didn't have any light fixtures in the way first to get those done. Once we moved on to the squares that had the light fixtures it was really easy to use a template that we created to cut out on the surrounding boards to allow for the recessed lights to pass through. We did the same thing for our Fire alarm. The next thing we had to do was create a pattern and angled pattern for our angled wall where the fireplace is located. The easiest thing for me was just to start with one board, measuring the angle and the distance from the anchoring beam to the fireplace wall and then cut at that angle. Then keep measuring the longest distance of the board for each board that was installed to create the proper cut. It sounds like a lot but it actually worked out really well and went quickly.

 We were so surprised about how quickly this was installed and how beautiful it looks. I was a little nervous that I would feel like it was too rustic once it was installed but I'm so excited about the depth and the range and the movement that is in this wood because of the tone of the grain colors. It really continues to add warmth to the space and I'm eager to add in layers with the  millwork trim that's coming up in the next few weeks as well as just finish off the vibe with our custom fireplace mantle. We are so eager to complete the rest of the projects we have planned for this one room Challenge and see how it all comes together to create a really cozy holiday ready living room for us to enjoy this winter. I can't wait! 

This week we're pausing with the tongue and groove install, and are going to transition to doing the fireplace and the built-in bookshelf.  After these larger pieces are in, we can start doing the trim and beams to finish off the coffered ceiling. All of those pieces need to be in place before we can do the final parts of the beams. So follow along on our stories on Instagram for week 5 as we create the custom mantle I've been dreaming about for years. I'm hoping we may even have time to get started on our custom bookcase but we'll see how things go with Halloween week. Happy halloween!