Guest House: Ceiling & Floors

In this post, I'm going to provide a little bit of the detail behind the changes to the ceiling and floors.

Here are the ceiling and floors before we started last spring. When we bought the property six years ago, the floors were covered with burnt orange carpet, and the walls were varnished pine planks. We had previously picked up the carpet and painted the walls and ceiling back in 2006. 

Here is Mike is holding up a 2 x 4 so that I can get an idea of what my idea would look like! 

This is Mike talking out the details of the ceiling with the contractor we hired to help with the carpentry. We used 4 x 8 panels of wainscot paneling and at every eight foot seam, put a 2 x 4 to simulate an exposed rafter. We added an additional 2 x4 between so that the simulated rafters are every four feet. 

I believe my brother was to arrive in less than two weeks when this photo was taken. 

I couldn't figure out why this photo looked so strange but then realized that Mike took it, so it's from a TALL perspective. It made me wonder how different everything looks to him. 

Mike took this as well. You can see that we started the beams at the wall and then went every four feet from there, to the other wall. 

Here's the end run of the beams, which ends at the wall. 

I have to say that when I walked in at this point, I had a little panic attack. It felt very busy and claustrophobic, and I started to question my entire plan! This was also three days before my brother and his family were to arrive for their July vacation.

But the white paint made everything blend and the finished project much less busy, adding just the right architectural detail to the white palette. 

A little later in the summer, Mike rented a floor sander and sanded down the floors before painting them. He's very thorough in his projects and although I argued that just a light sanding would be fine, he disagreed. And he was right. It took a little longer but the paint adhered as it should and will last a long time. 

Mr. Handy

AFTER photos from the Country Living shoot.

I will post more after photos soon.