How to Make Faux Wood Beams

The vaulted ceiling in the living room of the lake house is beautiful and it deserves more attention than just popcorn texture! Learn how you too can improve the ceiling in any room and learn how to make faux wood beams.

This post may contain affiliate links or sponsored content. For full disclosures and practices, please visit my policy page.

Ceiling and Room Prep Work

This ceiling is heavily textured, so the first thing I will do is spray down and scrape this texture. If you want a full tutorial on scraping textured ceilings you can read the blog post! A large part of the preparation for this room transformation is taping the windows and doors to protect them from any debris or paint. Before you scrape any texture off of your ceiling, make sure to test for asbestos. Once my ceiling was scraped it was time to paint. I decided to paint the walls first, then the ceiling afterward. Spraying the ceiling with paint made me nervous, but I did it and it worked so well!

Cutting Lumber to Make the Faux Wood Beams

Now it is time to make the faux wood beams! These beams are going to be massive because the ceiling is so big. I am using a feather board for the first time on this project. I am using this because I am going to attempt a very long bevel cut. The table saw setup is very important for this cut. The long piece of wood needs to be flat on the table saw. To do this I clamp lumber against the rip fence as well as the feather board. I have my table saw set to a little more than 45 degrees, about 46 degrees. This angle gives me some wiggle room in creating the beveled joint. My setup is definitely not professional, I am just working with what I have! I created so much sawdust while doing this cutting!

Once my lumber has been cut the long way, it is time to lay it out and cut the angled ends. Because I am creating beams across a vault, both the top and the bottom need to have angled cuts. I determined that some areas on my walls needed 17-degree angle cuts and some needed 18 degrees. This cutting was very complex! When I had all 5 beams cut, 15 separate pieces of lumber, I was so relieved! I also put a stop block on my miter saw and cut a bunch of 1x4s to the exact distance between the hollow beams.

Assembling the Faux Wood Beams

Now that all my lumber is cut, it is time to assemble the beams! I am going to assemble these by laying the beveled side down and running packaging tape along both of the seams. The packaging tape is going to help hold it together as I try to flip the three pieces of lumber over. When the beams are flipped I apply wood glue to the beveled edges and stick them together. In the places where the wood is bowing, or not perfectly straight, I am shooting brad nails in to hold it tight. The next day, when the glue was dry, I am removing all of the packaging tape that I applied when flipping the lumber over. The joint is so strong, the wood glue is so strong.

Distressing the Wood Beams

Now that my beams look perfect, I am going to put them through the ringer! I want them to look like old-world beams like they have been weathered through time. I am going to start the distressing process by using a planar, this hand planar is going to randomly take thickness off in different areas on every side of these beams. Once I am done using that, I am going in with my jigsaw. I am using the jigsaw to rough up all of the edges. I used a few more distressing techniques to rough up this wood including; a wire brush drill bit and whipping them with chains.

Staining

Once the distressing is done, I am going in with 80-grit sandpaper on my random orbital sander to sand all of my beams. This is to get rid of the slivers I made while distressing and also to prepare the lumber for staining. The stain that I mixed up is custom, I mixed chestnut and American walnut. I did this in an attempt to match the existing trim in the living room. It was so fun to put stain on these beams because all of the distressing details came to life.

Preparing to Hanging the Faux Wood Beams

To hang these faux wood beams I first need to plan out where they will go using my laser level. The laser-level casts perpendicular and parallel lines across the ceiling. I measured out exactly how my 5 beams would be evenly spaced and marked that on the wall, and then I cast my laser level to make a perfectly straight line across the entire ceiling. This allows me to use Sharpie on the ceiling and mark where I should put my supports. I am not running a full board of supports for this beam, I am just putting the small supports exactly where I need to screw the boards in. I am using my magnetic stud finder on the wall side of my laser level to see if there is a ceiling joist.

If there is a ceiling joist where I want my beam I will be screwing wood to wood and it will be very strong. If the beam does not align with a ceiling joist I will install with toggle bolts. The supports are the spacers cut to the width of the inside of the hollow wood beams. The top and bottom of each beam will get the same supports. I want the beam to be attached to both the wall and the ceiling, it needs a lot of connection points. It is so important that these beams do not sag or fall.

Hanging the Faux wood Beams

To hang these beams I am getting help. My neighbor and husband are holding the beams in place and I am coming through and screwing them into place. I pre-drilled holes into the beam so I knew exactly where to put the screws. Some of the spots needed some coaxing to get flush with the ceiling. These beams are very secure to the ceiling. I am in awe of how good these beams turned out! If you liked this interior upgrade DIY and want to see more, my post on how to lay self leveling concrete is a great place to start!

I am in awe of how good these beams turned out! If you liked this interior upgrade DIY and want to see more, my post on how to lay self leveling concrete is a great place to start!