DIY Refinished T&G Cedar Ceiling Reveal

cedar tongue and groove ceiling makeover

I fell in love with the vaulted ceiling with red cedar tongue and groove planks and exposed pine beams the very first time we stepped foot into the master bedroom of our new home. It felt so cozy and inviting, and had a grandness to it that we were infatuated with. Unfortunately all the wood paneling and beams were in pretty rough condition and clearly hadn’t been cared for in many years. There was visible water damage, the planks were worn, scratched and weathered. The pine beams were previously finished with a dark, almost black stain color and were left a very rough cut, which had collected a lot of dust, cob webs and debris over the years. It had great potential, it just needed a lot of love!

The Before

Before | Panels had lots of wear, scratches & water damage

In order to bring this ceiling back to life, this meant a very daunting task… to sand it all down by hand and restore it to its natural state. Sure, I could have hired a crew to come in and sand it for me, which would have taken much less longer and saved me a lot of agony, but my stubborn and meticulous self thought that would be far too expensive when I could do it myself, and I like things done the right way so, I decided to make my life a living hell for the next few weeks instead.

The first swipe with the orbital sander was followed by instant regret, realizing what exactly I was getting myself into. But after the first few panels were sanded down and revealed its natural beauty, I knew it would be so worth it in the end! The cedar paneling was so weathered that the previous treatment was barely still hanging on, which made it really easy to sand it down, although still a tedious job. The beams however were a different story. Because they were such a rough cut with a deeply penetrated dark stain, they required a lot more muscle. I got halfway through one beam with the orbital sander feeling like my arm was going to fall completely off my body and realized a belt sander was needed to chew through the majority of the rough stuff before going back over with the orbital at the end to smooth it all out.

First beam and few panel sections being sanded

Slowly but surely I got through all the cedar panels one section at a time with the orbital sander, while my husband helped knock out some of the heavy lifting on the beams with the belt sander. Once the bulk of the beams were sanded I went back over them with the orbital sander using a finer grit to make everything nice and smooth. All in, it took a total of 4 weeks to complete the sanding part of this restoration project, including a week I took off to give my hands and shoulders a much needed break. What sweet relief it was to have the sanding part done!

Actually… the sanding wasn’t over quite yet. Next I needed to test some stain samples on both the panels and beams, which meant I had to use a pre-stain wood conditioner, then stain, let them totally dry, see which ones I liked best and then sand them off. And this was repeated a couple different times so I could overthink finding the right color. The tricky part of this process was trying to match the red cedar paneling to the yellow pine beams. I had a vision of the ceiling all being the same wood tone, but of course it wasn’t that easy. I was mixing stains to try to offset the reds in the cedar and offset the yellows in the pine – it felt like a science experiment. It was then I started to understand why the previous owners had just stained the beams black to avoid all that trouble! I was determined though… After all that time and hard work sanding I wasn’t going to settle for something I wasn’t happy with.

After experimenting with different stain colors, I decided on the Minwax Weathered Oak stain for the cedar panels and Varathane Early American stain on the pine beams. The Weathered Oak helped tone down some of the red in the cedar while the Early American added red undertones to the pine, which I found was a good compromise. I did have one funky pine beam that had especially yellow undertones and a very prominent grain that didn’t match the others. After stain was added the grain just soaked it up and looked really dark, even after using the wood conditioner. I decided to sand it all back down and use a bleach solution to help remove some of that discoloration. Although not perfect, it did lighten it up quite a bit and helped blend in with the other beams.

The Funky Beam

Once all the areas with stain samples were sanded back down to bare wood, the next step was pre-treating the entire ceiling with a pre-stain wood conditioner. I starting with Varathane pre-stain (Home Depot) and covered 2/3 of the ceiling before running out – that was me totally miscalculating the number of quarts it would take to cover the whole ceiling. When going to get more, I found out there was a wood conditioner shortage so this stuff was not easy to come by.

I was able to get my hands on the last two quarts of Minwax pre-stain at Lowe’s, which was plenty to finish the job. I was a little apprehensive of using a different brand of wood conditioner in the middle of this project, but honestly it gave the same exact result, but had much less of a chemical smell which I appreciated. Once the panels were conditioned and penetrated for the appropriate time I began staining. I applied one coat of Weathered Oak to the cedar, and one coat of Early American to the beams. The “funky beam” got one coat of a 2:1 mix of Early American and Special Walnut (I found the Special Walnut stain didn’t penetrate into the pine and accentuate the heavy grain as much, which worked well for what I was wanting for this particular beam.

The After

This project was not an easy feat, and a very messy one at that. Between what felt like an eternity of sanding, the experimenting with stains to match red cedar and yellow pine, and trying to make that mismatched beam fit in with the rest of them, it was a huge undertaking and challenge a lot of people might not have the patience for. But despite the temporary pain and suffering, and questioning my sanity the way through it, ultimately I’m so glad I did it and took the time to do it the right way. Would I do it again? Hell to the no. But nothing can replace the feeling of pride and appreciation in doing things yourself, and knowing exactly what it took to get to where it is today. I look up at it in awe every day and it makes me smile. I’m SO happy with the result and absolutely love our “new” ceiling, it came out more beautiful than I could have every imagined.