Thread: Ceiling Pie

G'day!

Been a while since I've posted any WIPs, so I thought I'd break the drought.

We've been building a brick bed-sitter with a curved wall in one corner, around a 1500mm radius. As I'm sure you can understand, running cornice around that part of the ceiling wasn't something I was looking forward to. Instead, I came up with a cunning plan... let's line that part with floor boards instead of plaster and make it into a feature!
Silly, silly me.

I had planned on simply cutting wedges from Tas. Oak floor-boards to make the "pie" segment, but the house owner grabbed the idea and ran with it. After numerous sketches he finally settled on a design with Merbau inserts.

Pic 1 shows most of the pieces cut to angle (and yes, I T&Ged every last joint. ) although not to length; that had to be done in situ. The round wall in the background is the outside curve of the corner they're going into. It certainly gave the ol' Triton a work-out.

Pic 2, 3 & 4 show the really nightmarish part. I had to try to work out the length of each piece and the angle(s) to cut them so that each sat slightly short of the bricks in the inner wall. Silly, silly me. I'm sure I could've steam bent plaster architrave a lot more easily! Because each piece is wedge shaped they wanted to 'creep out' while nailing, so I ran a bead of glue along each T&G. It remains to be seen if that was a mistake or not... I certainly hope not.

'Twas a hard coupla days, but I think the end result will be worth it. Once it's properly sanded and DO'd. Which probably won't be for a month or six... not until I forget the aches and pains and feel stupid enough to stand there with a sander over my for head for a few days. Then I'll be building a bar to go underneath it...

(BTW, I was gonna title this post 'a ceiling fan,' but SWMBO convinced me it wasn't punny. )