Nursery Star Ceiling and Interior Soffit Project

Finished product first. Stars are fiber optic strands that are routed through a false ceiling. I also used LED strips for indirect lighting for the room.

Sketchup model of the framing. The sloped ceiling made things a little tricky in spots so I wanted to make sure everything fit together before starting building. If I had a flat ceiling with an attic above things would have been much easier, but I didn't so I had to build a false ceiling.

Rough idea of what the finished thing should look like.

The start point before beginning any work.

2x4s are used on the sides. I used a 2x8 cut down the middle with an angled cut for the front/back pieces to match the angle of the ceiling. Things would have been a bit easier if I spent more time looking for kiln dried lumber, but it was straight enough and a few shims later in the process corrected any problems.

2x2s attached to ceiling joists. These were kiln dried and pretty straight forward. It's not perfectly square since the ceiling isn't perfectly square, but it's close enough.

Connecting it all together with plywood and smaller 2x4 pieces. If you look closely you can see that the small 2x4s don't line up perfectly with the large 2x4s on the wall, but it's close enough.

The goal was to have the stars be a realistic view of a spring/summer night sky since my son was born in April. The room also has a north facing window so I thought it would be cool if you could look out the window at the right time and see some of the same stars.

The star ceiling kit I used had 288 fiber optic strands with different thicknesses to represent different brightness of stars, so I needed to find the brightest 288 stars for the section of the night sky I wanted to recreate. This was a tedious process that involved lots of screenshots from a program called Stellarium, each screenshot I took had a different magnitude filter and was then dropped into a new layer in paint.net. Then for each layer I painted dots over the stars to mask them and kept count as I went.

Here's a link to the star ceiling kit I used:
http://www.wiedamark.com/288ledstarceiling.aspx

I then used a projector to map the stars to the drywall that would be used for the false ceiling. I ended up scooting some of the stars away from the seam since I assumed that would make things easier, but I don't think I really needed to do that. I knew that mudding/sanding later on would cause any star here to be sanded flat before painting, and I was worried that painting over the stars would block them. I found out later that they shine through a coat of paint pretty well and a dremmel with an engraving bit can knock some of the paint off the tips pretty effectively.

Poking 288 holes through drywall with a sewing needle. I tested different sized needles for the different sized strands to try to get it to fight snugly. The large sized strands ended up needing a thin drill bit.

Labeling the different strand sizes since it was pretty hard to tell the difference between the smalls and mediums and I wanted to make things easier on myself when it was time to plug these things through the drywall. It also let me count how many of each strand I had, which was good since it didn't match what was advertised, I ended up with 30 or so more medium strands and 10 or so less small strands. Some of the small stars were upgraded to mediums at random and the extras were unused since I wasn't about to redo all the work needed to plot the points.

Sorting and placing the strands needed for the different sections of drywall. I ended up bundling the smalls together and removing the stickers since they were getting in the way. The mediums and larges were bundled together since those were easy enough to tell apart.

The view from the ladder, this was pretty tedious to pull individual strands out of the bundle and get them sorted.

Rented a drywall lift so I could plug in the strands and raise the drywall up to the ceiling. Once it was close to the top I dabbed glue in each spot to hold it in place. I think it would have been better to remove the stickers before gluing since some of the strands ended up being glued to the sticker rather than the drywall.

Strands hanging through before being trimmed, looks pretty cool in person.

Trimmed down the strands. I didn't trim them totally flat since I was going to paint over this, then give them the final trim.

Other side up. The constellations ended up being hard to see since the brightness of the stars ended up being very similar, even between large/medium/small fibers. The light kit I used also has a "twinkle wheel" which works by rotating a disc with holes in it to basically turn off some of the stars as it rotates, which can make it harder to identify constellations. I think if I wanted to chase down the realistic view of the night sky further it would require removing the twinkle wheel and painting over the ends of stars that should be dimmer, but losing the twinkle effect would be less entertaining for a baby so I left it as is for now.

Mudding/sanding the seams. I ended up sanding down the tips of the fibers that were close to the seams/edges since it was hard to get things smooth otherwise. I was really hoping that I didn't cause bigger problems later since it would be tricky to get the paint off the tips of the fibers, but the paint didn't actually dim the lights that much anyways so it wasn't a huge deal.

Painted with the lights off and ends of the fibers trimmed. I was really happy that it ended up looking like a normal ceiling with the lights off.

And with the lights on. I was really happy with how well things were coming together at this point.

Plywood shelf added to hold the LED strips for indirect room lighting.

I hired an electrician to put an outlet up and hook up a light switch to one of the outlets. The fiber optic light box thing was put inside the structure since I didn't want light to leak through and it was a little bulky. The other stuff I figured was small enough to stay out of the way especially once the trim was put up to help hide it.

Light strips turned on. I wasn't able to get a picture of it that matches how it looks in person, but the way it glows almost makes it look like you are looking out a big window into the sky as the sun is setting. It's a very cool effect and turned out better than I thought it would.

More drywall to finish it up.

Adding trim, I initially wanted to use 1x3 pieces so I could block the view of the electronics, but this created a hard shadow from the LED strips and since I really liked the soft glow I decided that a shorter trim was needed.

Switched it out for 2x1 pieces, but even then it was slightly too tall. I ended up using a router to shave down the inside edge and that was just enough to avoid creating a hard shadow.

Trim up, glow effect still looking good.

Taped up everything for mudding, sanding, and texturing.

Close up of the texture, it's not as blotchy as the wall texture but it's close enough.

Finishing the seams with a bead of caulk after the tape was removed.

The view of the electronics. I think I'll try to find a 12v dc brick that is smaller or in white to hide it better.

Finished painting. Pretty happy with the results, but I'm still thinking about painting the trim a slightly darker color to help frame it better. Not sure if I should yet though.

All done. Thanks for looking.