The Kitchen Ceiling

We are back to work after a couple of weeks off for the holidays, Scott's mom's visit, and my brother's wedding. We spent some time relaxing, went to the beach, and just enjoyed time together. 

In the time off Scott was able to refinish the arbor he built for our wedding so my brother could use it for his. 

Here it was at our wedding:

And here it is for my brother's wedding:

This arbor was at our wedding, then spent a year in our garden, moved across the country with us, and then sat in storage for two years, but a few extra screws and a fresh coat of stain and it was good as new. 

After the wedding we didn't want to put the arbor back in storage so we decided to put it up at our house. We don't have a garden or a fenced yard, so space was limited, but we loved how it looked right at the entry to the house. However, hurricane winds and an arbor don't mix, so we cut off the back overhang on the arbor so it could butt up to the house and be secured:

Scott used some really large anchors in the concrete to attach the arbor securely so that even if we have strong winds it won't go anywhere. 

I'm glad I snapped a couple photos before we took the Christmas lights down, they made the house so inviting! 

I'd like to plant some Bougainvilleas on either side of the arbor to let them trellis up. Landscaping might forever be on the "to-do" list. 

With the decorations down and the house back to normal we continued on. Before Christmas we had a goal of getting the soffit down and patching the ceiling, but we knew we wouldn't come anywhere near close to finishing the ceiling, so here's where we left off: 

We didn't remove the drywall in the center of the ceiling as it was already the correct height and we were trying to save some insulation (and prevent having to clean up said insulation), so we patched around it. 

I have visions of a coffered ceiling in the kitchen to give it a little pizazz, so before we drywalled we took a few minutes to draw out the pattern on the computer (I used the cricut design space since I got a Cricut for Christmas and have been playing around a lot in there). 

The blue rectangle is the island, the small black rectangle is the light in the center of the island (to be determined what that will look like), and the grid around is the layout of the coffers. Our kitchen is *almost* square (just longer by like 2 inches one way), but the island isn't in the middle and we wanted to make sure the coffers look right with the island and the light so we started there and worked our way out, meaning the island will have a rectangle the size of two coffers over it and the other squares are based on the size of 1/2 of the island, with the squares by the walls being smaller (but we also will have upper cabinets touching them). 

Once we had the design mapped put we taped it. It's really hard to get a decent photo of a ceiling. 

The light you see isn't the one we'll be using and it's not in the right location (we just hooked it up to have some light). The new light will be towards me in the center of the big rectangle. 

We also mapped out where the drywall sheets would go so we knew how big to cut them and so we'd have a game plan for hanging them.

We rented a drywall lift, but unfortunately couldn't use it because of the sheer size of it and the giant island in the middle of the kitchen. (Pro tip: if you're renovating start from the top with the ceiling, and work your way down to the floor, don't follow our haphazard order). 

My dad came to help with the drywall and mom joined him about half way through. We got it all hung on Saturday and Sunday Scott and I taped and mudded the seams:

This is our first time doing all new tape on a ceiling, we've done some repairs, but this was pretty new to us.  I may or may not have had an "oh my gosh we are in over our heads" moment, and Scott snapped me out of it.  Looking at the videos in super-speed you can't even tell I was second-guessing all my work, ha! 

Scott put up most of the drywall around the walls, just one wall left to go. 

We stopped work once we had all the ceiling seams taped, leaving the rest for the next week

We aren't exactly sure how much more work will need to be done on the seams, we'll know more when we sand and get the next coat on, so for now I'm setting our goal at just finishing the seams this week, but if we get to painting I don't think either of us will be upset!