Interesting ceiling will keep things looking up

The Baltimore Sun

You've watched dozens of remodeling shows on television and clipped photographs from countless magazines. You've set aside spare cash for months so you'd have a decent project budget. You've scoured the aisles at home centers and decorating outlets, and now you're ready.

It's time for new floor coverings for your home, so you head out the door and return an hour later - with a 5-gallon bucket of white paint.

Say what? How about the distressed reclaimed wood-plank flooring for the family room? Tumbled marble tile for the master bath? Funky retro linoleum for the kitchen? Plush carpeting for the living room?

Are you going to abandon those great options and roll white latex paint instead? Of course not. That wouldn't make any sense, would it?

But people who wouldn't dream of living with plain floors or walls often relegate their ceilings to that kind of second-class status, sporting nothing more than a light texture and a coat of white paint.

That's a shame, because a ceiling can be one of the most definitive elements in a space.

All the qualities that we associate with beautiful walls and floors can, to some extent, be part of a ceiling as well.

In fact, in rooms where extensive design work is evident on walls, flooring and other surfaces, a plain ceiling isn't just a lost opportunity - it's a glaring omission that will detract from an otherwise impressive package.

All the surface needs is a little depth and variation, and often there's just one routine obstacle to overcome.

Assuming that your home has conventional flat drywall ceilings, it's likely you have solid anchoring points only along the joists, which run only one direction and are spaced at wide intervals, usually 16 inches on center.

This can limit the kind of fastening options you have for trim and other detailing, but it doesn't rule them all out.

For example, you can fashion a simple grid of square-edge 1-inch-by-2-inch molding strips with half-lap joints. This method involves notching each piece at intervals that match the joist spacing.

If you don't want to be limited by the joist layout, you can screw sheets of 1/2 -inch plywood to the ceiling.

These have to be attached to joists, but they create a wide-open fastening area that will hold nails and screws much better than drywall.

Another easy treatment is to create a shallow perimeter soffit around the edge of the room, leaving a "raised" well in the center. You can use 2-by-4 framing lumber (oriented flat and attached to the ceiling joists with screws) to create the offset, then cover it with drywall, corner bead and joint compound.

This is a simple and inexpensive upgrade and has the paradoxical effect of making the ceiling appear higher, because the center area - though still at its original height - appears to rise from the lowered outer portion that surrounds it.

If you want to explore this topic further, architect Dennis Wedlick highlights other design options for ceilings in his book, Good House Parts (Taunton Press), which showcases some beautiful examples of coffered ceilings and other treatments.

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