Laundry Room Beadboard Drop Ceiling

Spring is in the air, and that means that Rob is going stir crazy to start some sort of project.  We have the basic run of the mill laundry room. It has the ever so beautiful florescent box light fixture. This hasn't worked in over a year, because we wanted to replace it at some point instead of buying more florescent tubes to fix it. We just had our old floor lamp in there until this week.  The pictures are done with our phones mostly because it was easier for us in the time we had to take them.

Rob came up with an idea of how to update the lovely drop ceiling already in there. We knew we couldn't do a normal ceiling due to all the pipes that run above it to our three bathrooms and laundry room. And with the amount of water issues and leaks that we have in our home it was a good idea to keep it like the drop ceiling we already have.  Rob got out his pad and pencil and drew a design he thought he wanted to work on. 

First we took out the existing light fixture, ceiling tiles and metal brackets.  

The next step was framing out the new ceiling, and that way the bead board ceiling would have something to rest on.  Rob placed 1 x 6 pre-primed pine around the edges of the ceiling. This was basically in the same spot at the original drop ceiling.   Please obviously excuse the cords and pipes.  This is obviously why we needed a drop ceiling to remain in this room.

Here you can see around the edges of the ceiling where Rob has the 1 x 6 pieces in place. 

We needed a place to put our router due to the location it needed to be in. Instead of having it on the shelf or shelves we are installing later, Rob chose to hide them up on the ceiling. He used bolts to attach a piece of leftover wood to serve as a shelf inside the ceiling.

The sheets of beadboard were purchased from Lowe's along with the foam they are lined with to help with lessening the noise from the washer and dryer. Then he placed the pieces in their frame just as you would a typical drop ceiling. This just looks nicer than those 80's looking panels we had before.  Here is a view from below. You can see he added a bit of trim modeling around the edges of the beadboard that had not been painted yet in this picture.

He bought this light from Lowe's for $40.  It is so much better than our former light fixture. The light it provides for this window less space is great.

Here is some detailed information on how Rob went about assembling and building the ceiling:

We started by ripping 2 x 4's in half (you could use 2 x 2's) and screwing them to the wall 3/4" above where we wanted the ceiling to be.  While taking the old drop ceiling down I took a pencil and traced the bottom of the bracket around the room.  After I hung the 2 x 4 I ripped off 3/4" of the 1 x 6 pre-primed pine boards (this gets routed and then tacked back on later).  I screwed them to the 2 x2  using 2 inch drywall screws around the parameter and also placed a eye hook on the part of the board facing the floor joists so that I could add some wire to attach them to the joists later for extra strength (though it didn't need it). 

I attached each of the pine pieces to each other using the Kreg system pocket screws.  I then made the center section roughly the same size as the each of the four quadrants. When I cut the wood for that I also ripped 3/4" off of each side. I then hung that from the floor joists using eye hooks and 55 lbs strength steel wire that your would use for picture hanging. I then measured off the middle of each wall and attached a piece of wood from the center section to the wall (again ripping off 3/4" off of each) attaching to each using pocket screws and hanging with eye hooks. 

I then cut 32 x 48" to fit up in the opening after gluing ridged green foam to the back (to insulate sound) I placed it in the opening.  The 3/4" pieces that i ripped off earlier I routed a profile on the wood we used a Roman Ogee profile.  I cut them to fit the inside edges mitered for 45 and tacked them in.  This is mainly what the bead board sits on.  The idea being that if I need to access whats above the panel I just pop off the routed piece and the panel drops out.  The light in the center with its medallion hold the center bead board up.  

Here is a look at the finished ceiling after a few days of work.  Next up for us is painting the walls, adding new storage solutions and a new floor. This may take us a few weeks (or months) but we will get it done. 

Thanks for stopping by! We look forward to sharing more of this space with you.

Kitchen Cabinet Redo - Beadboard Inserts

We painted our kitchen cabinets a few years ago from our 1980's contractor brown and spray painted our brass handles and knobs to resemble oil rubbed bronze. However, we knew we'd like to update them again.

Here is our kitchen when we moved in...Ugh

Rob began with wall behind the cabinets. He purchased eight foot sheets of beadboard at Home Depot and painted them black. He had to make a few cuts on this side for the electrical outlet and the corner.







The sides of the cabinet were not as easy as they required a double layer of beadboard to match up with the wall section behind it. 

He then took off the doors of all the cabinets. He cut the beadboard to fit inside each of the cabinet faces.  He used wood putty to fill it in.









Rob then had to do a lot of work to match up our new bin pulls rather than the knobs that were previously in place.  He said that it was the most time consuming of all the parts of the project. Rob sprayed painted the old hinges to match the new hardware.



The after pictures...









Hope you enjoyed our transformation.  We will be leaving the upper cabinets open without doors. We plan on wallpapering the back of them and painting the inside as well. I'll post those pictures once we complete that part of the project.

Paint Lowes - $35
Beadboard - $100
Trim - $25
Hardware - $25

Total $185

Rob and Megan

Simple Chair Redo

My mom gave me her chair from when she was a little girl to redo for Wynn's birthday. I'm doing a polka dot theme for the party, so hence the fabric choice. First I took the chair and sanded it down. Then I painted it with leftover paint from a previous project in Olympic's Decorator White. Next, Rob used foam that was leftover from our headboard project to secure to the chair. I had gotten a few yards of polka dot fabric from Jo-Ann Fabrics to use for the party. The entire project cost approximately 3 dollars for the fabric. I had used materials from other projects, so I'm excited that it was really inexpensive to complete. Check out the photos.

Megan

Bathroom Redo

Beadboard Ceiling - Inspired by House of Smith's www.thehouseofsmiths.com

We decided our eighties bathroom needed a makeover. We saw a great idea on one of my favorite sites a blog called "House of Smith's".  Their blog is amazing!! 

Here is our bathroom when we moved in and we had not touched in in the almost four years we've been here.



We had to buy some new tools to use in this project because we

Crown Molding - Lowe's    $55

Beadboard - Lowe's          $90

Mirror - Walmart             $22

Light Fixture - Lowe's      $50

Artwork - Home Goods    $30

Faucet - Overstock          $55

Shower Curtain - Lowe's  $20

Total Cost for Project     $317

Here is the new view of our bathroom ceiling instead of the boring plain ceiling that existed before it.

These are other images from the bathroom. We kept the original countertop for now, and when the budget allows we hope to replace that and get a new toilet. We also kept the originial tile floor.

Ta-Da. Thanks to my husband Rob for all his hardwork during his holiday vacation from school.

Rob & Megan