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How to Build a Ceiling Dome |
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Installation With the dome complete, the next big task was to mount it into the ceiling. This was going to require cutting a great big hole in the ceiling, cutting away the ceiling joists, and then framing everything back in. By this point it was now Christmas Eve and I'd managed to talk a buddy of mine into coming over to help with the heavy work (thanks again Markus!). In the picture below you can see I've reached the point of no return where I've started cutting out the hole in the ceiling. 
In preparation for cutting the ceiling joists we propped up the ceiling: 
Then after moving all the electrical, I got started cutting: 
Markus was a great sport and stayed until 10pm Christmas Eve helping out with the heavy lifting. By Christmas morning everything was framed and the dome was ready to be raised and mounted. Here is my wife being a particularly good sport about the mess and noise on Christmas morning: 
Here is a shot of the ceiling: 
Since the dome is only about 35 pounds it was pretty easy to lift into place. Here is a shot of the dome raised into the ceiling: 
Up in the attic I finished framing in the mount for the dome. The dome is hung from four 3/8in bolts. This made it very easy to align the dome with the celing as I could tighten or losen the bolts as necessary to get the rim of the dome to line up with the ceiling. Once aligned I added the 2x6's to apply downward pressure on the dome frame essentially locking it into place: 
Here is a shot with the chandelier mounted in the dome: 
The next step was to cover up the gap between the dome and the ceiling. Now that the dome was mounted solidly in the ceiling I sanded down the rim so that it exactly matched the ceiling level. The plan was to cover the gap with some trim so everything needed to be flat. Of course when it came time for trim, there was no place that sold what I needed so I made my own trim from a scrap of 1/2in MDF: 
Here is a closeup of the trim: 
Here is a shot with the trim mounted: 
Here is a shot of the completed dome along with the custom bookshelves and drawers: 
Here is another shot from the doorway: 
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