New porch ceiling - brag post

Looks awesome.

Looks great man. I’ve been wanting to do this on my porch and carport for a long time. Not sure I have the skill to do it myself though.

I'll try anything. I'm a commercial roofer, not a wood worker by any means. I've collected tools over the years and had what I needed for this job. The one thing that scared me was the wiring. I'd never ran wiring before or messed with vinyl siding. I did both!

Tips:

1) get a count of linear feet of wood needed not square feet. 1x6 T&G covers 5" wide. I'm talking about what's visible, not including the tongue, so if you're deck is 11' wide like mine, 11 x 12" is 132 inches wide, divide by 5" = 26.4. That's how many runs of board I needed. Multiply that by the length of your porch. Mine was 17' long. 17 x 26.4 = 448.8 linear feet of board. 448.8 divided by 12' boards is 37.4 boards or 448.8 divided by 8' boards is 56.1. I had that one offset over the windows and I always buy more materials just in case. I used both 8' and 12' boards.

2)buy all your wood from the same place but measure the width of every piece. I had one 1x6 that was 1/4" wider than the others and didn't know it until I filled in a run with a piece and it threw off the next run making it stick out wider than it should've. I ended up ripping two runs back out to go back to the same width board and set that one piece off by itself. It would've been fine to use it on one whole run.

3) stain the wood before installing

4) start with the groove against a wall and work out from there, blind nailing in the tongue as you go.

5) it's easier to use shorter pieces when working by yourself than trying to hold up and nail a 12' stick of wood. My teenage son helped some but there was days I had to work by myself.

6) you don't have to cut each piece so it ends on a joist. I was doing that and was losing too much wood. The next run will hold it fine.

7) I used 2" 18ga finish nails in a nailgun hooked up to my air compressor, a table saw to rip long runs, a miter saw, a jigsaw for the can lights (a router is good for can lights but I don't have one). Everything was corded so if you've got battery powered tools that would be better. A oscillating tool is good for cutting the nails when pieces don't line up and you need some flexibility in each piece of wood.

8) use a rubber mallet to tap the boards into each other and also use a scrap piece of T&G so you don't damage the tongue on the board you're installing.

9) don't get in a hurry and thoroughly think out each move

You were busy. Looks great!

Looks awesome. Great work.