If you don't get my very corny joke, this weeks focus was on the Tung and Groove ceiling!
We have a tongue and groove ceiling going all across our porch, and I wanted more than anything to salvage this ceiling but after hours of power washing and scrapping we determined that it just was not going to be feasible to scrap off the layers of brown paint and bring the original wood back so we decided to do the next best thing and purchase 7 sheets of Tongue and Groove Pine Planks from Home Depot and recreate the original.
But let me just tell you, they don't make wood like they used to and the grain is all over the place, so if you want a really rich wood tone, you are going to have to take a few extra steps to achieve it.
First we wet all the wood down, this helps to open up the pores of the wood
*To achieve this, all you have to do is soak a rag in water and wipe down all of the wood planks
Next we used a wood conditioner used a cheap paint brush to apply it to all of the boards, let it sit for 15 minutes and then wiped off the excess.
Now on to the stain----now I would not recommend your standard wood stain--for the most even look I recommend a Gel stain, we used Old masters Gel Stain in Rich Mahogany
We applied two coats of stain to each piece (wiping off the excess between applications).
After the stain we applied to coats of lacquer to seal the wood and give it an extra shine.
We wanted to keep to the original style with the ceiling, which had all of the boards running horizontally ( by that I mean that the rungs ran from the house out toward the street) so we had to cut each our board to fit the space, so Rob cut the 27" excess off of our 8 ft boards!
after that it was time to brave the ladder....and I mean brave...these boards were freaking heavy (and I have the upper body strength of a newborn so holding a heavy board over my head for about 7-15 minutes while trying to align everything perfectly and secure the boards with multiple hits from the nail gun was a real challenge and my neck did not love me for it.
Because the boards were so heavy we decided to take the extra measure of adding concrete adhesive to the back of the boards followed by 1 1/2" brad nails to hold them in place.
We managed to hang all of the boards to the front porch ceiling, and we actually had two boards left over (a lucky surprise or a strategic wife whos husband isn't the best at math...I'll let you decide aha) so we were able to use the extra two pieces to redo the ceiling on the back porch and I for one could not be happier ahah!
^^Close up of the boards on the back porch
Both ceilings look like a million bucks and I cannot wait to add the crown to the front, which I am hoping will be done by Tuesday so we can get to work on the new outlet and door trim before my mom gets here on Friday (I will be curious to see if she notices the changes...shhh no one tell her and lets make some bets ahah!
And don’t forget to follow along with the other amazing designers participating in the One room Challenge and to follow spackleandshine on Instagram for daily updates!
Oh i really like this!! My son's front porch is very similar i will be sharing this with him