Using flooring for wainscot and ceilings

[Stephen Tashiro]

On the web, I find examples of flooring materials being used for wainscot and ceilings. Are there standard ways of doing this?

Modern vinyl, hardwood, and laminate flooring is often designed to be assembled as interlocking pieces and the floor "floats" over the subfloor, it isn't attached to it. Provision for expansion of the floor is made along the edges of a room. Since a ceiling or wainscot material can't "float", what's the best way to attach it?

One thought is to cut off enough of the locking edges so the pieces overlap but can move relative to each other. Then attach each piece to a plywood substrate.

Many flooring materials have a fiberboard type of backing that must be protected from moisture by a vapor barrier. Do they need a varpor barrier when applied on a ceiling?

[Jim Becker]

I would think that the trick with the more flexible stuff (vinyl, etc.) would be finding an adhesive that would work with it to help hold it to the wall since mere framing may not do the trick. For the harder materials (laminates, engineered wood, etc.) they can be continued in the same manner as "regular" wainscot type materials.

[Bob Vavricka]

I did a "planked" ceiling in our bedroom. I used an engineered flooring that was pretty thin, I think 5/16" because our ceilings are already low in the upstairs. The ceiling had popcorn texture that I scraped to level out but did not remove. I ran it at right angles to the ceiling joists and used a long narrow crown staple to staple it at the joists at an angle through the groove for the tongue. It was click lock planks. I did put a small amount of construction adhesive on the back of the plank as I installed them. I was able to stay out from the wall a little bit because I put up crown molding after doing the planks. The ceiling was a little wavy, but I found that a staple put in at a sharp angle through the groove into the sheetrock would actually pull up the flooring being thin and pretty flexible. I was comfortable doing that since I was also using adhesive.
My wife and I like it so I guess that is all that counts for us. IMG_5714.jpg
Picture needs to be rotated, but you should get the idea.

[eugene thomas]

think depends on the quality of flooring.

[Ron Citerone]

I just put dumawall as a wainscoating in my powdee room onto drywall. They recommended Loctite Power Grab Ultimate as the adhesive. 1month later all is well. Looks great. Went up well.

[Erik Loza]

Pretty common type of project we did during my architectural millwork days. Ideally, engineered flooring for stability. I doubt you will have movement issues in an indoor ceiling application. We always butted them tight. Nowhere near the amount of moisture a flooring application might see. They usually just nailed it up to furring strips.

https://deltamillworks.com/project/timeline-house/

Erik

[Kev Williams]

Thanks for the ideas, I've been trying to figure out what to do with the ceiling in our houseboat, which is some sort of acoustic panels spaced between the 2x6 ceiling joists with some sort of trim cap that covers the joists. I've never figured out how the caps are attached?
skipceiling.jpg
-I believe the joist are on 12" centers, they also support glass over plywood floor above..

Very similar to this mobile home ceiling-
mobileceiling.jpg
--we just bought a mobile home, seen quite a few of these ceilings while searching, these joists appear to be on 16" centers...

Got plenty of wood to screw flooring to, need to run this by the wife