Our family room has a coffered ceiling, which is one of the things we fell in love with in the very beginning.
As soon as our offer was accepted on the house, ok… maybe a little before that,
we started planning what we wanted to do to the ceiling.
After searching for ideas on Houzz or Pinterest, which actually becomes overwhelming,
we had a good idea of what we wanted it to look like in the end.
The next task was actually getting to that end result!

This is the best before photo I have of the ceiling. This the family room on the day we closed.
The door on the left goes into the master bedroom. The sliding doors on the right go out to the patio.

We knew we wanted to paint the inside of each box a dark gray color.
Our final decision landed on Valspar Wet Pavement and it worked out perfectly.
Greg borrowed a 10 foot ladder for this project because our ceilings are insanely tall,
we’re talking 12 feet tall and 13 feet inside the coffered squares.

Over the course of two nights and one gallon of paint, Greg painted all six squares.
The final verdict was that it was better painting with the extender on the ladder (as shown).
Each square has a pot light, which meant the light bulb was removed and the cover was popped out.
Since we knew that the crown molding was the next step, there was no taping required.
The painting was the easy part.

The entire next day was dedicated to crown molding.
Greg measured every single box, because of course, they weren’t all the same,
that would have been too easy, right?

Thankfully, Santa brought Greg a miter saw for Christmas, so it made this project more fun.
He has experience cutting crown molding from the framed mirrors.
The trick is to cut the molding upside down and backwards.

He concentrated on one box at a time, cutting all four sides of molding at once.
To put them up, he used a nail gun… thanks Chris for letting us borrow your Christmas gift!
Once all four pieces were up, he wasn’t quite done yet.
He used finishing caulk between each piece and the nail holes.
Greg didn’t move on to the next box until the previous one was completely done.

It may seem like he whipped right through these boxes, but it wasn’t that easy.
If just one cut was off just a little bit, the two pieces would not line up together,
causing him to cut and re-cut, until the two pieces were flush.
There was a lot of up and down on the ladder throughout the course of the day.
It literally took the entire day…like 10 hours!

Before we started this project, there was much discussion on how we were going to go about this,
and I’ll be the first to admit that I said several times that we should just hire someone to come do it.
I think it was all in the stress of moving and getting settled right in the middle of the holiday season,
coupled with having a 13-14 month old running around, yet still going about our daily lives.
I am so glad Greg convinced me otherwise!
It was so nice having my parents here after Christmas to help with other things while Greg got this done.
I am especially thankful we didn’t hire someone after we were watching HGTV
and they estimated that crown molding labor was around $1500 (!!) for one room.

The supplies we used for this project include:

1 Gallon of Valspar Wet Pavement paint – $33
2 EverTrue 8-piece Primed MDF Crown Moulding – $176.87 (with 10% off coupon)
2 DAP White Caulk – $4

The grand total on this project was $215 and it was worth every penny.
We love the new look!