The Den of Slack

With the porch finished, all I had left to do on the bungalow were a few pieces of trim. But first, as I often do as a project nears completion (see here and here), I went down a rabbit hole of destruction that took a little work to climb back out of.

It all started when I added beams to the ceiling. These came with the kit, but there was no interior photo so I didn’t know how they would look. But beams are beams, right? I know what beams look like. What could go wrong?

I stained them to match the rest of the wood, glued them in, and… I didn’t like them.

I used a scrap piece of wood to make sure the beams on each side of the ceiling are evenly spaced, but didn’t think about how the two at the top would look in relation to each other, and they’re too close together. And I also just didn’t like the look. It’s distracting, and it doesn’t say Craftsman to me.

Of course, I let the glue dry before I decided I didn’t like them. So when I pulled them down, the ceiling ended up like this.

So that’s not great, but shouldn’t be hard to fix. Right? Except…

Yikes. I didn’t notice that some glue on the beam had stuck to the wallpaper, and when I pulled the beam down, the wallpaper came with it.

Luckily one torn piece was still attached, and the other piece was stuck to the beam.

I was able to glue them back in place. Those spots aren’t perfect, you have to really look for them.

(It’s a good thing this was Brodnax Prints paper, which is thin and not coated. If it had been the thicker Itsy Bitsy Mini paper that I often use, I think the patch would have been more noticeable. On the other hand, the thicker, coated paper might not have torn in the first place?)

I cut another piece of ceiling paper and glued it in over the shreds of the old one. It’s like it never happened! Except…

There are some cracks where the ceiling paper doesn’t quite meet the wallpaper, and you can see the wood underneath. This was true with the first attempt too (you can see them in the first photo above, between the beams). I’d been planning to add skinny basswood strips, either painted ceiling color or stained, between the beams.

I played around with trim but it since very skinny pieces of wood tend to be flexible and not perfectly straight, I didn’t think I could glue it in snug enough to neatly fix the problem. I also tried masking the wallpaper and ceiling paper and dabbing paint in the cracks, which was pretty risky (speaking of ruining houses when they’re almost done) and didn’t work anyway.

If only the ceiling paper were a little thicker, these cracks wouldn’t be a problem…

I cut a piece of stiff paper and glued this in on top of the ceiling paper. The thickness of the paper covers up the cracks.

Then I glued a piece of ceiling paper on top of that. Third time’s a charm! Except…

The multiple layers of paper have gotten rather thick, especially at the peak where they’re not folded sharply.

Luckily this will be covered up by the stripwood trim I’m adding to the edges of the roof.

I glued 1/4″ x 1/32″ strip wood around the edges of the roof, stained Minwax Ebony like the shingles. My roof peaks had been a little sloppy because of how the pieces fit together, but the trim turns this into a nice sharp corner.

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