The supplier screwed up and sent my shipment of beveled cedar siding along with someone else's. They came back and stole a bunch from the front yard. After I counted it all out. I ended up with about 800sq ft of free extra (better grade) wood. They said I could keep it.
This is enough for me to do the inside ceiling. It is somewhat catherdral with one wall 8' and the other 10' high. I wonder if anyone has done a ceiling like this. It has a bevel. I was not going to overlap, but just place the 7" boards next to each other. It would look somewhat like the exterior siding. Has anyone done this? Any photos out there. I could shim the boards to make them flat, but that would be a lot of trouble.
I think I would still lap them a bit due to expansion and contraction of the wood as heat and moisture changes unless gaps don't bother you. I have done lapped cedar on the outside and lapped double wavy edge on the inside but - staggered in and out - your application would be different.
Or maybe a board on board look? We put up cedar boards without overlap, and even though we dried them for about a year, they still shrank and the look is not what we had in mind.
I find shrinkage of about 5/8 per foot of width average on most boards including cedar. It depends on how wet they are when put up.
The wood likely will expand and contract a bit with the weather. One option is to put some 15# black tar paper up as a backer. The dark background will hide the expansion of the wood a bit. Instead of seeing joists and insulation you would just see the black paper between your siding planks and thus it would not be noticeable.
I have not done this yet personally - but it is my plan to do my ceiling this way using 1/2" x 6" cedar. If someone else has tried and found this approach lacking, or just knows flat out if it's a bad idea, I would appreciate a heads-up.
That is the way the ceiling is in the main/kitchen part of the underground complex, muldoon, before I started shiplapping. No problems.
We backed it too, with that black plastic you buy by the roll to use in gardens.