Home Building Diary

Pine Ceilings and Louvered Screen Doors

December 4th, 2006

We installed the pine “roofers” on the bedroom and bathroom cathedral ceilings. The things they call “roofers” locally are pine boards, 3/4 inch thick and 5.25 inches wide. They are tongue-and-groove and have a beveled edge. The color is warm, the grain is interesting, and knots add character.
I needed almost 80 of them at 8-feet 6-inches long for the bedroom and almost 40 at 6-feet 6-inches for the bathroom. I cut, sanded, and finished them all using a clear semi-gloss water based poly-acrylic. That’s a nice product — it doesn’t smell bad, is easy to clean up, and leaves a hard finish. The bedroom boards got two coats and the bathroom got three.

Installation: we screwed furring strips horizontally across the roof rafters.  Then we put trim screws through the tongue of each roofer into the furring strips. The roofers run vertically up the ceiling. The pieces fit together fairly easily. When we ran into a warped board we just wedged it to bend it to our will. Notching them around the exposed ceiling joists took more time than anything else. We’ve cut cap-trim pieces to cover the gap at the very top, but haven’t installed them yet.

The louvered screen door that will act as a front-door at the end of my porch has received stain and polyurethane. Dark mahogany stain and three coats of “spar” urethane that should hold up pretty well outside. It doesn’t look like a cheap pine door anymore!

I’ve ordered a brushed-nickel screen door latch set from VanDyke Restorers. Once it arrives, we’ll put it on there and install the door.

Otherwise, there’s been a lot of boring painting with plenty of help from my sister and brother. Thanks! It’s a never-ending task … the downstairs trim still needs more paint. I hate painting, but a high-density foam paint roller sure makes painting trim faster and easier. You should give it a try.
I painted over the orange paint in the bathroom. It’s back to classy white now. Whew.

Oh yeah — Sandy and I put down the slate tile in the kitchen yesterday. I’ll make another post about that after it’s grouted.  KraftMaid shipped my kitchen cabinets to the local dealer three weeks early (!) so we’re racing to get the prep work done in there.

Entry Filed under: construction