Supplies:

-8x 1x4x12s (side of beams)

-4x 1x6x12s (face of beams)

-4x 2x6x12s (braces for ceiling)

⁃ circular sander with 120grit and 220

⁃ Wood glue gorilla glue

⁃ Wood filler Minwax color natural

⁃ Brad nailer 18g nails

⁃ Construction screws (long af)

⁃ 3x Liquid nails /caulk gun

⁃ Minwax oil based Stains: pre-conditioner, Ipswich pine and Golden Oak

⁃ Clamps! (So many)

We made 4 beams for the nursery ceiling. I wanted the warm up the room & make it feel more grand! It also had to collaborate well with the arches as both are relative focal points in the room.

The ceilings in the room are 8ft

The beams we made were 10 ft 6 inches long

I used 3 pieces of wood to create the box beam— 1×6 as the face and 2x 1x4s for the sides

When attaching to the ceiling we used a 2×6 but ripped it down to only slightly larger (wider) than a 2×4 to fit exactly inside the beam. We had some bad luck finding the proper studs all the way across the room as the joists went in the same direction as the beams. We did not check in advance during the planning phase, which was absolutely my fault😂). So we used liquid nail to properly adhere to the ceiling and very long construction screws to attach to each corner stud. We used a car Jack to hold pressure on the boards on the ceiling for the full 24hour dry time.

Building process-

1- sanded all boards to get rid of yellowing and imperfections

2- cut boards to size (started with 10ft7in)

3- wood glue, clamp, brad nail together to create the 3sided box

4- let wood glue dry with clamps on

5- brad nail together

6- wood fill nail holes & cracks

7- sand wood filler and excess glue

8- clean with rag

9- Minwax wood conditioner

10- Minwax Ipswich Pine stain – wipe on & off (I used a magic eraser!!)

11- Minwax Weathered Oak stain- on/ off

11- I didn’t add any more stain or whitewash as the color worked well for my color match to the rest of my trim!!!

12- tried to fit into room— didn’t fit, so cut off about 1/4th an inch

13- once fit we used the brad nailer to attach to the inside 2×4 board for support. I nailed on both sides about every 12 inches

14- all done!! The whole process is documented in IG stories (beam highlight) or ig reels😍