I wanted to change the feel of my work-from-home room (a 6-tatami / about 10 m² space), so I went after the ceiling and re-clad it with wooden planks.
This article covers the process, tools, lumber, and cost of re-cladding a ceiling in tongue-and-groove planks.
Tearing the original ceiling down took some nerve, but it went fine in the end.
Material cost came in around 30,000 yen for the planks.
It felt incredibly intimidating going in — “can a hobbyist actually do this?” — but in practice it was manageable. It is real work, sure, but doing it DIY saves a lot vs. hiring it out.
So can a non-pro really re-clad a ceiling?
→ Yes — if you commit to it. The individual operations aren’t that hard.
(A pro would no doubt have a list of things to nitpick about my work, sure…)
One note on tools: the standard pro approach uses a finish-nail gun (nailer) or a stapler/tacker. I don’t own either, so I didn’t use them.
I considered buying a nailer just for this, but they’re pricey, so I passed.
I fastened the planks with screws and a drill driver instead.
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Before and after
Before
Before: standard white wallpapered ceiling.
I didn’t actually have anything against the look — I just couldn’t shake the urge to have a wood ceiling.
After
After re-cladding in wood planks.
Look up and the room now has the warmth of wood overhead.
Here’s how it went.
Tearing down the existing ceiling
Prep
Big sheets of gypsum board (drywall) are about to come down on the floor, so I covered the floor and furniture with plastic sheeting first.
Tearing out a ceiling kicks up a lot of dust — wear a dust mask and safety glasses.
For gloves, go with thicker work gloves to avoid cuts.
Take down the ceiling light fixture.
Ready to tear the ceiling out.
Demolishing the existing ceiling
Pulling down the gypsum board
To start tearing the gypsum board out, punch an initial hole in it with a hammer.
That first swing takes some courage when you remind yourself that there’s no going back.
Once you’ve got that first hole, use it as a starting point and rip the rest down.
Dust comes down without mercy, so the glasses + dust mask are non-negotiable.
Aside: I did this in autumn, which was fine. You can’t run the AC during the work, so doing this in midsummer or midwinter would be brutal.
With the gypsum board gone, I could see that the original installer had laid insulation batts between the ceiling joists. I’m leaving the insulation in place.
Next, the “mawari-buchi” (the trim molding that runs around the perimeter where ceiling meets wall — see next photo). Pull on it firmly and it comes off.
Demolition complete.
Disposal: gypsum board can’t go in regular trash
In Japan, used gypsum board is classified as industrial waste and has to be disposed of via a paid waste-handling service.
You cannot put it out as regular non-burnable trash. Worth knowing before you start.
Removing leftover staples
The original gypsum board was held up with staples (like big stapler crowns), and after demo, the staples are still embedded in the ceiling joists. Pull them out one by one.
I used a small pry bar.
Sometimes when you pry, only one leg of the staple comes out. In that case, give up trying to pull it cleanly and just snip it flush with end-cutters.
Staples cleared. Ready to start the new wood ceiling.
…or so I thought, until I spotted some mold up there.
I sprayed it with mold-killer (“Kabikiller”) to deal with that before continuing.
Lumber and cost
For the cladding I picked “Red Pine paneling” (Grade A) — tongue-and-groove pine boards.
Each board: 112 mm wide × 3,900 mm long × 12 mm thick. I ordered them online.
The room is on the second floor and 3,900 mm boards are awkward to maneuver up there, so I asked the supplier to cut them in half before shipping.
I picked the lap-joint version (rabbeted edges) — see the diagram below. The boards interlock along their long edges via the rebated lip.
(In Japanese, the protruding edge is called ozane and the rebated/female edge is called mezane.)
Boards: 23,000 yen. Shipping: 1,650 yen.
(You could go cheaper by switching species or dropping a grade.)
Installing the planks
Time to put the planks up.
The standard tool here is a finish-nail gun or a stapler/tacker. I don’t own one, and didn’t want to buy one I’d rarely use again, so I went with my usual DIY rig: drill driver and screws.
I can’t compare directly against a nail gun, but the drill-driver-and-screws approach worked fine.
・Adhesive on the joists
Run a bead of adhesive across the joist where the next plank will land.
I used “Yuka Shokunin,” a urethane-based flooring adhesive.
・How to fasten the planks (hidden screws)
To keep the screw heads out of sight, drive screws at an angle into the rebated (female) edge of the plank, as in the diagram below. Subsequent boards work the same way.
I’d previously done a wall-cladding DIY with the same kind of paneling (→ here), but at the time I didn’t know about hidden-screw fastening, so I’d just driven screws straight through the visible face of the boards.
The screws I used for the planks ↓
Watch out: orientation of the very first plank
Because of the hidden-screw method, the first plank’s orientation matters. If you flip it the wrong way, the screws you just drove block the next plank from interlocking. (I did exactly this — installed plank #1 backwards, only realized when trying to seat plank #2, redid plank #1.)
First plank up, in place:
The room is wider than one plank is long, so I cut planks to length and pieced them together along each row.
For cutting I used a circular saw — and for this project, I built a circular saw guide / sled.
Strongly recommend: a circular saw sled / guide
Working through this project taught me that if you own a circular saw, build yourself a sled for it.
Even though I owned a circular saw, I’d been mostly using a jigsaw for cutting because the circular saw “felt scary.”
With the sled:
・Straight, accurate cuts to a precise length
・The fear factor drops dramatically
Highly recommended.
Plenty of build instructions out there online; I followed YouTube videos by “DIY母ちゃん” (DIY Kaachan).
From here on it’s basically:
cut plank to length → run adhesive bead → screw into female edge
Repeat.
I made sure adjacent rows didn’t butt at the same point — staggered the seam locations so the eye doesn’t pick up a continuous line.
For the ceiling-light socket near the middle, I notched a slot in the plank where the cable comes through, threaded the cable, and screwed the socket back to the ceiling joist.
The “put the planks up” phase took me about two days.
Down to the last plank.
The last gap is narrower than a full plank, so I rip-cut the final plank to width.
The last plank can’t take a hidden screw (no female edge to drive into), so I just drove a regular screw through the face near the wall edge. (That last screw will get hidden by the perimeter trim later, so it doesn’t matter.)
Wood ceiling complete. Real sense of accomplishment.
There’s still a small gap between the new wooden ceiling and the wall around the perimeter.
The trim molding will cover the gap visually, but I wanted real airtightness, so I sealed the gap with airtight/weather tape first.
Last step: the perimeter trim molding.
I used a 40 × 15 mm wood stick from the home center.
Fastened with “kakushi-kugi” (concealable nails — see below).
Concealable nails (“kakushi-kugi”) have a head designed to snap off when you tap it sideways with a hammer after driving, leaving the rest of the nail buried with no visible head. (Photos below.)
Trim done.
Ceiling done.
●How long did it take?
I tore down the existing ceiling on a weekend.
Since this is also my work-from-home room, I picked up the rubble and cleaned during the week so I could keep working there — even with no ceiling, the rest of the room was workable.
Then the next weekend I put up the planks.
So end-to-end it was about four days of actual work.
Now that the ceiling is wood, I’m starting to want to do the walls in wood too.
Maybe next year.
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