Until now, we hadn’t had much experience with tackling difficult ceilings. In fact, the only ceiling that we’d even touched was our breakfast room ceiling, which used to be round and pointy like a teepee. Or like a circus tent, as some family members liked to say. :)
It turns out our previous foray into ceiling-leveling was a walk in the park when compared to figuring out how to make the ceiling in the great room at the flip look cohesive and perhaps (dare I dream) even impressive, as opposed to choppy and totally weird.
You see, once we decided to take down all the walls and incorporate the covered patio into the great room, we were left with 4 (yes, four!) different ceiling heights and shapes.
Clearly, that wasn’t going to work.
Our first thought was to extend the den’s original tray ceiling to encompass the entire space – however, we quickly realized that wouldn’t work because the ceiling would hit the roof line above the covered patio portion of the great room and create an awkward step-down.
Our next plan was to vault the ceiling, which would solve the problem of the roof line. However, we were having a tough time figuring out where to place the apex of the vault. Should it be centered on the length of the wall . . .
. . . or centered on the fireplace?
And then we got the news from the head framer that our grand vaulting plan would require 3 exposed beams, which further complicated things.
In the end, we decided that we didn’t like any of those options, so we scrapped that plan and went back to the drawing board.
What we came up with next proved to be a winner – it was essentially a combination of our original plan of the tray ceiling and the vault. We decided to follow the roof line to create an angled ceiling until it reached the height of 9 1/2 feet and then run the ceiling straight across and mirror the angled ceiling on the other side. The angled ceilings would be above the French doors at the back of the great room and at the opposite side of the room above the entrance to the great room.
Make sense? Here are a few action shots to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:
And here’s how it looks now that the sheetrock has been installed:
Looks pretty great, right? In the end, I think this room is what’s going to sell the house – and the ceiling is a big part of that. Even though getting to this point was a bit of a battle, it was worth it. We’ll see if the buyers like it!
Does it look how you thought it would? What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had to tackle in your own home?
