Our focus was on Nolan's room, and specifically on his ceiling. You'll remember from my last post that we had planned to expose the shiplap on his ceiling, but once we tore down the sheetrock, there was too much coal dust for us to leave that wood exposed. So we moved to Plan B, which consisted of sealing the ceiling using some insulation, then adding our own shiplap on top.
This has been our view for the past few weeks - the insulation that we placed to seal the ceiling.
As I mentioned in my last post, we found some old wood at our local lumberyard, and David stained the large planks. He then ripped them on the table saw to get them as close to the width of the shiplap we have throughout the house while minimizing waste of the boards. Once he had ripped them down, he used a dado blade on his table saw to cut the 1/4-inch lap so that the boards would fit snuggly together. (We decided to cut lap instead of tongue and groove to help make the install much easier - and I'm glad we did!) We then stained the lap on either side of the board so you wouldn't see raw wood once the boards were on the ceiling.
We attached the boards using a pneumatic nailer. We figured out a pretty good system for getting them up there, which involved the use of two ladders and some scaffolding that David would walk across to get from one side of the room to the other so he could nail the boards in place.
We started the install on Friday night and were very excited at how easily the boards went up!
I can't believe how easy it was to install the boards. Install took us probably 6 hours total. We had no idea going into it how hard it would be. Probably the hardest part was getting all the boards from the garage up to Nolan's room!
David nailing the final piece in place.
We only had to make a couple of cuts: one for the center of the room where the wiring is for the light; and the other to rip the last board so it would fit.
Once we took a quick break from the install, we started working on the crown molding. If only it had been as easy to hang...
This is a 100+ year old house. It's not square (even if it was a year old it probably wouldn't be square!). So we knew installing crown wasn't going to be easy. But we did it, and with a little caulk here and there, it looks amazing!
The finished product, with crown installed.
I didn't let David rest much after installing the crown. We installed a ceiling fan, hung the curtains (beautifully made by David's mom), and moved a couple pieces of furniture into the room. It is starting to feel like a little boy's room, and is making us more and more ready to have Baby Nolan here!
I need to steam the curtains now that they're hung and do a million other things, but here's a little sneak peek of Nolan's nursery decor.
More photos to come once we finish his room, but for now you can find me rocking in his chair, enjoying his room and being so grateful that the ceiling and crown install is complete!
