Wood Ceiling Suggestions

[Garay Holland]

My wife and I are still building on our home and are just about ready to start the cathedral ceiling. We used steel trusses for the roof and attached 3/4" plywood as a base for the cathedral ceiling in the living room. We were able to get a local oak flooring company to make a special run of 8' lengths of tongue and groove 5" planking for us. Our plan is to prefinish the planking before installing. There is about 650 sq ft of ceiling in this area. We designed the house on a "high mass" - "high insulation" design with a main thrust of natural products. Our plan is to use a shellac finish for the ceiling.

We would greatly appreciate any and all suggestions, hints, recommendations, warnings, etc. that we can use as we start this phase of our project.

Garay and Pat Holland

[Bob Cooper]

Not sure how much advice i can give you but we did sort of the same thing except it was the entire upstairs of a new house i just built. All the ceiling is made from 1x6 T&G cypress. I sprayed stain on it and then 2 coats of poly before my framers installed it on the ceiling. Figured that was a heck of a lot cheaper than paying a painter. Turned out fine.

To paint it, we built some A frame racks that the board sat one and each rack could hold about 10 boards -- each board was about 16' long. If you so this, use a good face mask to keep out all the fumes and make sure it's a still day.

[Jim Nardi]

I wonder how well it could actually be finished given all the valley's from the tounge and groove. It might be quite a chore putting it up on the ceiling. Each piece is going to have some heft to it. Perhaps a coat or two while it's on the ground. I'd spray the plywood to seal it keeping the expansion to a min. Then after it's up I'd spray the whole thing with a water based finish for ease of cleaning.