Let’s Install Ceiling Tile & Faux Beams in the Living Room!

Several years ago, while visiting my daughter-in-law’s mother’s house – boy, that’s a mouthful! – I fell in love with the coffered ceilings (see example pic below) in her living and family rooms! Her home is much older than mine and has all the wood accents that I love! Since visiting, I have often thought about doing something with the vaulted ceiling in our living room. It’s nothing fancy, just drywall. It wasn’t until I helped my sister with her sewing room ceiling that I knew just what I wanted to do in our living room!

Sister’s ceiling tile project

While this type of tile does not need to be painted, she wanted a dark, moody vibe in her room. She applied two coats of copper then antiqued the tiles with black. The result was beautiful! The tiles look like they are made of metal. Here is a sneak peek at my sister’s ceiling project. For full details, the blog post is here. 

My ceiling project

Now that I experience with installing ceiling tiles and saw how amazing sister’s ceiling came out, I knew what I wanted to do with our living room ceiling. When I told hubby about it, he said he thought the ceiling would look good with the tiles, but he didn’t want them painted a dark color, like we used in the sewing room because it could darken the living room. Ok, I could live with that. I also like how bright it is in our living room. I then showed him several of the tile designs that I liked. He chose the one we installed at my sister’s house. Alrighty then, I ordered a box of 96 and started on the project.

A few differences

Step 1 – Decide on beams

Over the years that I have stared up at the vaulted ceiling, imaging how it would look if I did ‘something’ with it, I imagined wood beams. Online, I’ve seen people create faux wood beams. The beams they created were made of 3 pieces of wood then anchored to the ceiling by attaching them to a piece of wood that was screwed into the ceiling. After watching the process several times, I was confident that I could make faux beams. However, I didn’t really want to go to all that extra work on this project. I wondered if just attaching a board to the ceiling would give me the look I wanted? I figured it was worth a try. If I nailed up a board and it looked odd, I could then build a beam to go around it.

Step 2 – Divide the ceiling

The living room ceiling extends over the staircase. Since I only want to tile the living room section, I had to separate the two parts of the ceiling. The section in the living room is vaulted, but the one over the staircase is flat. I decided to attach a board along the line where the vault ended and the flat ceiling began. The length of the ceiling at the divider is 13 1/2′. I didn’t want the boards to be too heavy, so I bought two 1/2″ x 3″ x 8′ pieces of hemlock to use as my divider. I stained the boards with 2 coats of water-based stain in Provincial and applied a coat of water-based polyurethane.

When the poly was dry, I cut one of the boards to 5 1/2′. I then cut one end of each board at a 45 degree angle so the boards would fit together well when they were installed. I installed them using my nail gun.

Step 3 – Decide on layout

Now that the living room ceiling was separated from the staircase ceiling, I could calculate how I wanted the ceiling tiles and beams to look. I thought it would be great if I could use full tiles as much as possible. I measured the ceiling at its widest point from the existing trim on the ceiling. Once I had my number, I saw that I could use 10 full tiles for the length if I added two 6″ boards. Since I’m a visual learner, I also held up a tile and marked the ceiling to ‘see’ how the layout would look. After I was confident in my calculations, hubby and I used a chalk like to mark the ceiling. By the time we were done with the caulk lines and all my tile/beam marks, the ceiling was a bit of a mess. No going back now…unless I wanted to paint the entire living room ceiling!

Step 4 – Add center board & additional ceiling trim

Years ago, I added trim along the top of the wall & ceiling in the living room, but I didn’t add any on the ceiling that connected the living room to the dining room and pantry. Before installing the tile, I needed to add that trim.

Step 5 – Paint the tiles

Since hubby didn’t want dark tiles, I chose a color similar to the ceiling color we already had – Linen White in an eggshell interior latex paint. To paint the tiles, I used a 4″ roller and a small paintbrush. Using a roller gives the tile a slight textured look. I applied two coats of paint, allowing the first coat to dry a minimum of an hour. I painted 78 tiles over several days. There were drying tiles in almost every room of the house. The painting process is easy, just time-consuming.

Step 6 – Installing the tile

Installing the tile is really easy, you apply adhesive to the back of the tile and press it into place on the ceiling. When we installed the tile at sister’s house, we used Loctite in caulk form. I decided to use a tile adhesive instead so I could apply it to the tile using a putty knife as opposed to a caulk gun. It was just a personal preference. The other difference was after pressing the tile to the ceiling, I rolled each one using a new paint roller to make sure it was securely attached. The picture of the tile with the adhesive is the first one; I ended up adding additional adhesive to it before installing. I ended up using 4 tubs of adhesive – I probably could have used a little less. The dollar amount both sister and I spent on adhesive was about the same.

Step 7 – Adding the beams

Since I wasn’t confident that everything would line up exactly as it should, I waited until I had all the tile installed before installing the beams that would go between each section. As we all know, nothing in a house is exact. As I finished each section, I left a space of 5″ before starting the next section. I figured that would give me enough space for the beam and would overlap the tiles by just a bit.

The outer 2 sections are 3 tiles across & the center sections are 4 tiles across. After staining & adding poly to all the boards, I cut each one to length. Installing the first one was easy. When it came to installing the 2nd 1/2 of the beam, we discovered that we had to ‘tweak’ it just a bit to line up with the first board. When we were installing the board, I was surprised (although I shouldn’t have been) that most of the board did not cover any of the tiles. As I was saying, nothing is exact in construction.

Step 8 – Adding a bit more trim

The last bit of woodwork was to add some trim along each side of the center beam. This was also a space that I wanted to address after the tile was installed so I could see exactly what size of trim I needed to use. As it turned out, like I hoped it would, it needed the same size trim as the original ceiling trim I had used along the outer edges of the room! The center trim had to be cut around the base of the ceiling fan. I used my jigsaw to make the cut. It wasn’t pretty, but after a bit of sanding, then caulking once it was installed, it looks pretty good! Yes, we replaced our old ceiling fan!

About installing ceiling tiles

While the ceiling tiles are the same size – 19.6″ x 19.6″, they are not exactly the same. Even though each of us was very careful to line the tiles up and install them as close together as possible, there were still some gaps between some of them in each of our projects. In my research, I saw that some people chose to caulk the gaps. In my case, I didn’t find that necessary. If you think the gaps will make a difference in how you like the finished project, prior to installing the tile, you can paint your ceiling the same color you paint your tiles; that will make any gaps less noticeable.

These tiles are also available in color, but they cost about 3 times as much as the unpainted ones. If you do plan to paint the tiles, be prepared to have them strewn about your house while they are drying :)

New ceiling look!

Living room ceiling: Before, during, after

For your convenience

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