Bringing Our Historic Home Back to Life - What About the Ceilings?
Keep looking up - ‘cause that’s where it all is! This has always been one of my favorite sayings from the morning show of the Christian radio station I’ve listened to for years. Little did I know how this simple phrase would become our mantra for how to deal with the frustration of the drop ceilings in every room of our 115-year-old fixer-upper.
We are not sure when these dismal drop ceilings were installed - probably in the 80’s – but besides being ugly – they covered up a plethora of issues lurking beneath those tiles! (Fortunately we were able to repurpose the old lighting fixtures with one of the previous tenants who had moved to another property down the block and with our local Habitat ReStore.)
The only good thing was that we knew there was an additional 12” of ceiling height (prime real estate in my book). What was really cool was that whoever installed the grids left fragments of the original wallpaper for my archives!
At some point – in some areas – previous owners had thought that popcorn ceilings would hide old plaster issues. But once the ceiling grids were installed it gave the owner free reign on putting holes just about everywhere they wanted. So the plenums were just a mess of wires and old fixtures we had no intensions of keeping.
Once the grids were down it left us with yet another tough budget decision. Do we simply drop the ceiling again with some 2x4 framework and lose my beautiful ceiling height OR do we demo the original lathe and plaster ceilings and start from scratch. This decision was a no-brainer for me – being a self-proclaimed “Lighting Junkie” I had big plans for these ceilings! AND I also LOVED the nearly 10’ ceilings we had just unearthed.
So down came the ceilings of EVERY ROOM – Yes, dust and dust and more dust. But most dramatic was the pile of lathe in the front parlor – which would become my studio. The pile was almost too daunting for me to take – it was probably at this point in the demo that I made a decision. One that my husband still reminds me of to this day – I decided that we were going to do it all – no matter what it took – beg, borrow or (okay, I wasn’t that desperate) I was going to give ourselves a deadline, too. Looking at the pile of lathe I decided that we had 6 months to finish this renovation – I could not live like this any longer!
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