Oak flooring is a beautiful way to dress up a ceiling. It's also a fairly complicated method. Unlike laying a floor, hanging planks on a ceiling requires that you end-cut each plank to land in the center of a joist (because ceiling plaster won't hold the nail the way subflooring will). That means there will be more waste than usual, so add about 20 percent to the square footage -- instead of the usual 10 percent -- when figuring how much flooring you need. Make sure the planks are pre-finished.
Instructions
1. Climb your ladder with your studfinder, pencil and level. Find all the ceiling joists and draw lines along the center of each one, going all across the room.
2. Move the ladder to one side of the room, next to one of the walls that run perpendicular to the joists. Hold a flooring plank up to the the groove-side pressed against the wall and one end butting against the adjacent wall. The plank should be running perpendicular to the joist lines. With your pencil, mark on the plank where it crosses the last joist line.
3. Take the piece down and put it on your miter saw, set to a 90-degree cut at the mark. Cut it. Run a bead of carpenter's glue along the back of it, then take it back up the ladder and set it back in place. The cut end of the piece now should fall directly in the center of a joist. Affix the plank to the ceiling with your nailer, putting in two nails at each point where a joist crosses the plank.
4. Repeat for the next plank, setting it at the end of the first one, then cutting the opposite end as needed to land at the center of a joist. Continue until the last piece comes to the adjoining wall. Again, put carpenter's glue on the back, and two nails at where a joist runs behind the board.
5. Put the groove side of the new piece for the next row against the tongue of the piece that's already nailed up. Again, measure and cut the end to the center of a joist, making sure this time that it doesn't line up with any end-lines from the first row. Put glue on the back. Use your rubber mallet to tap the pieces together, so the groove of the new piece locks around the tongue of the previous piece. Nail the new piece by putting in one nail per joist at an angle where the tongue starts, so the nail holes aren't on the face of the board.
6. Continue across the room in this fashion until you get to the opposite end of the wall. Use your table saw to rip the final piece to size, and affix it with two nails per joist through the face. Finish by hanging ceiling trim at the edges of the ceiling all around the room.
Tags: center joist, across room, carpenter glue, ceiling with, each point