Painted exposed ceiling

If you have been following my DIY basement renovation, you know I’m turning my dark, out-dated basement into a cozy family room. One of the things on my list was to expose the joists in the ceiling and paint them white. Its been a lot of work to get to this point, but its starting to come together!

Here is a before picture. Its honestly depressing to spend any time in this space.

The prep

I cleared out the space and I went to work taking down the ceiling tiles. They were pretty easy but it was a messy job. There was a lot of dust and rodent droppings. It was disgusting. I wore gloves and a mask and used a heppa filter on the vacuum when cleaning up.

Once the tiles were down and cleaned up, I had rows and rows of strapping to remove. Using my pry-bar and hammer and pulled them down, and also used a saws-all to cut it into more manageable pieces when needed.

Painting

Then I was ready to start painting! I had an airless paint sprayer from Harbor Freight given to me, and I don’t think I would have done this job without a sprayer. It would have been a lot of work to hand paint the joists.

I had already started the German Smear technique (read about that here) on the bricks so I covered everything up and prepared the paint gun. I used Kilz II primer in a 5 gallon bucket and I used at least 3 gallons to spray the ceiling and wood shingles.

What a difference already! I kept moving, changing my point of view to make sure I didn’t have any missed spots. Also I didn’t really cover the carpet since I’m replacing it anyway, but the sprayer has a lot of over-spray that settles on everything, so cover anything you value before starting. I was able to control the spray and gun well, but the paint mist settled everywhere.

The coverage could have been better, you can still see some texture and staining coming through the paint. I want to cut off all those exposed nails and I need to wire in some new canister lights so for a first coat this was perfect.

The reveal

These are the after pictures (so far!) Follow more of my DIY basement renovation as I have to finish the German Smear down the wall. I also plan on painting the shingles in a Ben Moore Pale Oak color. What type of flooring do you think will look good in this space?