Beam Me Up Scotty

It's been a busy week! First, I must thank my sis-in-law Sara who came over and helped me clean saw dust off windows and hours cleaning up drywall mud off the floors. It was so much more fun with a bud and it made the time go by so fast. Thanks Sara!



So, we decided to go with a light colored ceiling...an off-white. Do you know how many "whites" there are in, say, just the basic Sherwin Williams color catalog? Well, we just so happened to have a color catalog and there are over 50....and that's just the basic popular ones. Karie, if you are reading this, you would be so proud how I used your method of "testing" to pick the right color. I think we're really going to like this one.....

We had a friend of ours, Christy Mower, who does some interior design work, come over and give us some advice the other day. I love having her come over to, at the very least, validate our ideas and she always has so many great ideas of her own. One of her ideas that we are going to use is putting up beams to make a coffered ceiling.

We did some research on faux beams and man, are they expensive! And they're fake! In our case, they would have to be faux because our ceiling just wouldn't hold the weight of real ones.

We figured out styrofoam beams would be over $4000. Wood ones were still over $1000 (already made). So, of course Dustin, being the handy man that he is, says, "I can make them".

Still, the cheapest wood at Lowe's is pine and we calculated the project to be over $700. Do we just accept that as the price of remodeling and making a cool ceiling?

Well, thanks to me and craigslist, we found (36) 1x8x14 pine boards for $100...leftovers from some dude out in Weiser.

The cons?....Dustin had to pick them up way out in Weiser (about an hour and a half away) and they're tongue and groove flooring. Not a big deal though with a handy man and a handy dandy table saw.....a quick fix and totally worth the savings. Decorative beams for $100?!

Dustin was in his glory (his happy place) today and had all the beams built in an afternoon. We then solicited Ethan and Ellie and even a neighbor kid to help distress the beams. We all took out our frustrations with hammers, chisels, and picks.....

Here are the boards....nice and smooth before the pounding mayhem....

Here's Ethan, going for it.....

Here's an example of the finished product....beaten up and stained.....

Does it look like a real beam? It does to us....especially from 12 feet down.

Here's Dustin pretending like he's holding up the beam with his head (you really gotta click and magnify the picture to appreciate the look on his face).
I helped him place it up there and it really is quite light.......

We were going to have three beams across and then two going down the other way.....but now, we are contemplating just leaving the three across and keeping it simple. We'll see what it looks like when they're all up. Stay tuned for the final look......