Faux Barn Beam Ceiling ~ Master Bedroom Remodel

This is the before…

…floors are beautifully finished.  Yippee!

Now, on to the faux barn beam ceiling.  Remember we live in a 1952 Gunnison ranch home, which offers some quirky building features that we have tried to deal with in different ways.  When we bought the home 13 years ago (yikes! has it been that long already?), we did major renovations ourselves, like doors, windows, roof, etc.  Even hit most every room with upgrades except our bedroom.

Our solution was to take 1/4 luan (plywood) and rip it into 8″ pieces to simulate an old-school planked flooring above.  Thankfully, the wonderful guys at Home Depot made the cuts for us at no cost. (we were originally quoted .25 cents per cut – cha ching!!  Saving!!)  It took us four 4′ x 8′ panels to do our 12′ x 12′ ceiling.

The only prep work for the wood was hitting the cut sides with my sander to remove the rigid edges.

To install the strips, we used my self-given birthday gift, my pneumatic nailer to quickly get them up.  (or use the AirStrike, my latest nailer mentioned here) To create the gap, we just grabbed a scrap piece of 1/8″ thick pressed board and it worked great.

If you notice in the picture above, we were going to end up with seams at some point across our ceiling because the 8′ panels won’t cover a 12′ ceiling.  Don’t worry, we had a plan.

We intended to have the seams land in a spot that would be covered by the faux flooring beams we were going to add at a later point. Otherwise we would have staggered the joints.

Once the panels were up, we just needed to hide the nail heads with a small swipe of wood filler.  Looking better already!!  (Thank you, JC!)

Then, we just hit those puttied spots with a light sanding to create a smooth surface.

We wanted to keep with the idea of creating a light, relaxing space, so we painted the ceilings in one of my favorite cool white paints by Behr, Dove White. (sorry, no pics of the painted part before beams)  Just a couple coats with a roller and a bit of touch up with a brush to the seams.

Now for the beams.

We bought four simple pine beams (1 – 2″ x 6″ x 12′, 3 – 2″ x 6″ x 10′), and distressed them to get that rustic hand-hewn barn beam look.

My husband just took our hatchet and went down the out edges hacking away in random motions.  (Yes, he is out on our heat-wave day of 20 degrees – seriously, we were happy to have that temperature!!)

Then, to get the face of the beam roughed up, he took his Bosch planer and hit it in random points while on it’s lowest setting.  You could use a hand planer as well, if you don’t have a tool like this one. (You really should get yourself one of these, they rock!)

We choose to use a nice contrasting stain from Varathane, called Early American. I use this stain in many of my projects…see them in these posts.

Next, to mount the beams, we ran them perpendicular to the seams of the wood strips to get the feel that they were supporting the faux upper floor.

Do pin and share to inspire others to stop wishing and start doing. It only takes a little DIY and you can have the look you’re after too.

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Come see how we took on our floors and then how we planked our walls after our faux barn beam ceiling.