Couple discovers how to get their 'cozy' back

Chicago Tribune (MCT) - If there's someone who knows about wide open spaces and a rising rumble, it's Nancy Faust Jenkins, organist for the Chicago White Sox.

Jenkins and her husband of 29 years, Joe Jenkins, had an unfortunate brush with stadium-itis in their own home, a considerable Cape Cod that they had custom built (seven years ago) on 5 acres in rural Mundelein, Ill.

They moved here from Riverwoods, Ill., in search of "a change of life," says Nancy, noting her love of animals and the family of pets that their pioneering deeper into suburbia has allowed. They are the proud owners of a donkey (that does tricks), border collie mix and six Araucana chickens.

Besides the country setting, the Jenkins also wanted to downsize _ and thus the Cape Cod, albeit equipped with a hearty 2,600 square feet. It has three bedrooms, a music room and the piece de resistance _ a drifting, soaring, sprawling family room that rises 20 feet into a vaulted ceiling. The second floor is open to below.

It felt "cavernous, just cavernous," says Nancy. "It felt out of proportion (with the room)."

And mostly: "I just felt 'not cozy,' anymore," she says.

Although Nancy and Joe are generally aligned in their visions of "home," the soaring family room was one point of contention. They bought stock blueprints for the Cape Cod, and those came with the option for the 20-foot soar.

Joe was intrigued. Nancy was hesitant. But together they decided to give the soar a whirl.

Almost immediately, Nancy was struck with that un-cozy feeling: "I would talk, and I would feel like I could hear an echo." They tried any number of fixes.

Among them: painting the room a darker color; beefing up the molding on the entertainment unit (the tallest thing in the room); and lining the entryway to the room with oak.

None of that worked to make the room feel cozy or, at least, less cavernous.

And their idea of running crown molding around the room (at a height of 10 to 12 feet) to suggest a shorter ceiling never got off the ground. There was no common height to do that; each wall had its own issues.

At some point, Nancy came up with the right fix.

Inspired by the exposed beams in a converted barn they once owned in Des Plaines, Nancy proposed running wood beams across the family room's airspace. She envisioned them running at a height of about 10 feet, essentially cutting the heavens in half.

Joe was unconvinced.

"I really didn't know if I could do it. I wasn't sure how it would look," says Joe, a soft-spoken man-of-tools who (by day) is a field man in the Fremont Township, Ill., assessor's office (in far northwest suburbia).

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At night and on weekends, he's a "handyman kind of guy" who has learned his trade in "the school of hard knocks," as he likes to put it. "Over the years, I've just tried new things."

Among them: building an outdoor deck, replacing siding, constructing built-ins, staining and varnishing ad nauseam, building a dock. But the beams messed with his mind and for good reason.

"I had to find out where all of my ceiling joists were," Joe says. "Measuring was key to this. I knew I wanted four beams, and I knew how I wanted to divide them (space them). And it was critical that I could make the beams fall between the ceiling joists. If a ceiling joist was in my way, that would have been a roadblock."

No such roadblock existed.

By extreme good fortune, the ceiling fan and ceiling lights fell in good places too.

A vent on the east wall (thankfully) ended just below the 10-foot mark, which meant Joe could put a hanger there.

And in a final stroke of good fate, that portion of the east wall where the beams would hang was made from solid wood (with drywall over it). That allowed Joe to bolt his heavy-duty hangers right into the wood.

As for picturing "the look," he and Nancy engaged in real-fantasy play. They hung streamers across the room and took a picture of it. Using magic marker on the printed pictures, they then filled in the streamers to look like beams _ and, thus, got a pseudo-real glimpse of the finished product.

And without further ado, a do-it-themselves project was born.

It would involve building and installing four 18-foot-long beams to span the 17-foot distance across the room (the extra foot was necessary for hanging space into the wall on one end). And those would hang at a height of 10 feet. The process started structurally. Joe purchased four 18-foot long microlams (a.k.a. Laminated Veneer Lumber; used as structural components in construction). They form the innards/the structure of Joe's finished beams.

On the window-side of the room, Joe cut four holes into the top plate of the wall (where the ceiling and wall come together). He notched one end of each microlam and then slipped each microlam into its hole _ using the wall itself as the means of support. And on the east/entry side of the room, he slipped the beams into heavy-duty metal hangers, bolted into the wood subwall.

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Getting them up "was really a trick," Joe notes. He would "walk" one end of the microlam up a ladder and slip the notched end into the hole in the wall. And then he had Nancy hold it in place, while he scurried down the ladder and up another ladder on the other side of the room, where he "walked" the other end of the microlam up and into a metal bracket.

Once the microlams were up, it was time for the beautification process _ "building them out" is the technical term and it means gussying up these simple structural boards to make them look like substantial oak beams.

"This is an important part of the story," Joe says. "I wanted to make these beams large enough so that they seemed to the right scale. The proportion was important."

He built a mock-up in the basement. And he started by deciding "how big I wanted the final product (beam) to be."

He determined 6-by-9 inches would do the trick (beams that are roughly 6 inches across on their underside and topside and 9 inches deep from top to bottom when hanging).

And so he built out the microlams first with pine spaces and then a cover of solid oak boards (nail-gunned into place) on all four sides of each microlam.

The end result was pleasing _ but not exactly right.

The beams looked austere and modern and not Cape Cod-appropriate.

His next fix: Adding trim to each beam (making the beam now measure 7-˝ by 9 inches). And, voila, the beams turned traditional.

Through it all, Joe paid attention to details such as: not scuffing the walls (so he wouldn't have to repaint the whole room) and staggering the seams on the oak boards so he wouldn't end up with a parade of uniform seams calling attention to themselves from above.

(Unlike the microlams, which can be bought in lengths of 18 feet, the oak boards didn't come longer than 16 feet _ which meant seams. He staggered those seams by using boards cut to lengths of 10 feet and 7 feet.)

As for the finish work: Joe stained and varnished all the oak in the basement before he put the boards up. And after they were up hanging, he applied a second coat of varnish.

"I'm so proud of him," says Nancy, who notes that the family room feels so much better now.

Says Joe: "I'm really happy that we did it. It creates an illusion of a ceiling, of a top to the room. ... It really gives you a cozier feeling."

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RENOVATION NATION

Project: Easing the cavernous feeling in a family room with a 20-foot vaulted ceiling by building and hanging four oak beams at a height of 10 feet _ creating the illusion of a cozy lid for the room.

Project cost: $2,500 for the materials, hangers and stain/varnish.

Time frame: about 2 months

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© 2009, Chicago Tribune.