Ceiling Conundrum - Part II - Opening Up!

Okay, so we have waffled (a lot) but have finally made a decision for the living room ceiling.  I know many of you gave us input on whether we should remove the fancy coffered ceiling in the living room - read here.   Honestly, it was a hard decision.  The little bit that we opened up looked great, but will it all look that good?  What if it's awful?  

We finally took a deep breath and got started.  And at first, it was okay.  More beadboard, still looking good. 

But then we got to the other side of the living room and it looks completely different.   We know from old photos that this was a porch for many, many years.  When it got enclosed with a bedroom above it, the beadboard ceiling wasn't the style anymore and they used modern lumber with 16 inch centers.

The main living room has joists on 12 inch centers (they vary quite a bit!), with beautiful antique beadboard between them (there are also lots of places where the flooring nails come through from above, but that's another story).   So when you look at the whole ceiling, it looks very different on each side of the room. 

In addition, the old side has joists that aren't nailed in anywhere....they just float between a ledger board nailed at each end.  So they have twisted a bit and warped.  We'll need to see if we can somehow straighten them out, to make them look better.

So there are a couple of questions.  1) Will it make us crazy that the joists don't line up between the two rooms and 2) will it look okay if we try and replicate the old beadboard on the porch side.

To help me figure out how this might look, I went back to a house we did quite a few years ago that had a similar setup.  By painting the joists and beadboard white, it unified it a bit and also made the ceiling feel taller.  It's food for thought as we work through this!

Beadboard ceiling from a past project

And for now, I'm going to keep staring at the ceiling, trying to decide the proper course of action!  

Do we miss the old coffered ceiling?  Nope!  The extra few inches of height make a world of difference!

Our starting point

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