Preparing the Beamed Ceiling

The first thing you have to do to prepare a beamed, reeded ceiling is to mark on your ceiling plate where the beams are intended to go. The Carpenter-in-Chief undertook to do this for me this morning, as I am very straight-line challenged.

Then you tape off the areas where the beams are going to go, and put a seal coat on those sections. I am "thrifty", so re-used the same pieces of masking tape for the whole thing. Well, I'll admit it, I am very low on masking tape, and we have had a severe thunderstorm warning, which means I do not want to make the drive into town! As my room box carcass is MDF, a seal coat is needed as that stuff just drinks the paint.

That done, you proceed to put ochre paint in the areas where the reeds (corn broom cuttings) will go, and the area above the toilet and the stairs in white. The painted areas have to dry before you can do the next sections of tape. It all takes time....

Once all the sections are painted, I can glue down the first beam; this will be under the piece of masking tape, next to the right-hand wall of the room-box. And once that beam is securely glued, I begin to glue on the pre-cut pieces of broom corn. Then the reeds are trimmed to fit, and the next beam is glued in place, and the whole process starts over again, for nine beams and eight areas of reed "thatch".

I will just go ahead and work away, then.