Imitation Cottage Cheese Ceiling vs. Real Cottage Style Pine Plank Ceiling

Tomorrow it's back to work time for the Cottage Life crew (hubs and me). It has been so nice taking this long two month break from house projects, namely p a i n t i n g. After working on our kitchen cabinets for as long as I did, by the time I was finished I just knew that if I saw another paint brush, I'd find a dark closet and curl up into a fetal position...either that or I'd be fit for a straight jacket. But as of late, I've been antsy and eager to pick up the brush again. These household projects are a lot like childbirth...difficult and exhausting...but how soon we forget all of that after a bit of time has passed!

Tomorrow hubs and I start on our kitchen ceiling. Our current ceiling is horrid...just...gross! The rest of the ceilings in the house are covered with "cottage cheese", which is bad enough. But the majority of our kitchen is an addition which was built by the previous owner several years ago. The kitchen ceiling is not the same 'spray on' cottage cheese that is in the rest of the house, but is instead some type of plaster that was textured to look like cottage cheese. Yes, folks, we have an imitation cottage cheese ceiling in our kitchen!

What is worse is that you can actually look at the ceiling and see where the additions in the eating area and kitchen where added. In those areas, the "cottage cheese" just seems to look...festered? *gag* Look at the photo to the left...see what I mean?

So to rememedy the problem - and to add more cottage style of the non-cheese variety - we'll be intalling tung and groove pine plank ceilings and painting them white. The first step is to prime all the planks. Priming before installing will prevent any unprimed wood from showing when the ceiling expands and contracts. Hubs wants to go ahead and put the first coat of white paint on, too, before installing, but I'm afraid that a build up paint on the tungs will make them harder to install and might increase the chances of damaging some of them while trying to snap them into place. Plus, I'd really like to cover the festering cheese on our ceiling ASAP.

When the new ceiling is in place, we'll install most of the new lighting. We have some new recessed lighting plus oil rubbed bronze fixtures for above the sink, island, and dining table. I think, though, that I'll want to put back up the old brass fixtures temporarily until the dust settles from the rest of our projects here. The oil rubbed bronze fixtures have off-white linen shades that will just become filthy if we install them at this point.

But first things first, tomorrow we'll be laboring on Labor Day and will get our pine planks primed. I'm actually pretty excited about the thought of reuniting with my paint brush again!