Installing a Suspended Ceiling in a Basement
After we finished remodeling our kitchen, we had to decide what to do about the room below it. You see, we basically moved our kitchen from the center of the house to the corner, so we had to move or install new electrical, plumbing supplies, drain lines, and a gas line for the stove. That meant that we removed the old drywall ceiling from room below, clearing the way to install the new utilities in the exposed ceiling joists. The time finally arrived to put up a new ceiling in that room to make it functional again.
We opted for a suspended ceiling really by necessity. I suppose in theory we could have installed drywall over most of the ceiling, but the slope of the drain line meant that we'd need to install a soffit around that area of the ceiling if we wanted to gain the few inches of height. Also, and this is an important tip/warning-- we installed the utilities without thinking of the eventual ceiling, so some items ended up below the joists and our hand was forced. If we had to do this again, perhaps we'd think more about the cleanup afterwards and try to get all the utilities in the cavities.
So, suspended it was. The concept is fairly simple. Just screw in a level bracket around the ceiling perimeter; fasten the main lines to the ceiling with wire, form up the squares or rectangles for the ceiling panels, and slap them in. In practice, there were a few things to watch out for.
The perimeter border was fairly easy. We chose the vinyl option because it's easier to cut and easier to screw into the wall when compared to metal. The border is a 9/16 inch L bracket. One side is screwed into the wall with drywall screws, forming a ledge to rest the celing grid upon. The only odd thing we ran in to was that we had a air duct running into the room. We could have drywalled around it, but that would have taken forever and wasn't worth it for this room. So we were left with glueing the channel to the duct, or screwing into the duct itself. Neither were very appealing and we ended up doing a bit of both, depending in what was easier.
Once that was done, we had to hang the main lines from the ceiling joists above the room, making them level with the perimeter. This was a little frustrating because you need to align the suspension wire connection points with the ceiling joists. We had the joists running perpendicular to the mains, so we had a joists every 16 inches on center. But the main line had a spot for the wire to run through it every two feet. Thus, for an 8 foot main, it can be hung at foot 1 and 5, or 2 and 6, etc.. If I had to to this over again, maybe we'd run the main parallel to the joists. In any event, that's step 2.
From there, the grid formation is basically an exercise in assembling a giant puzzle. The pieces that connect two mains together to form squares or rectangles are called "T-s" and the ones we had were notched to snap securely to the mains. Finally, the panels hit right in.
One final point-- don't get the cheapest panels you can find. They tend to be rather fragile. I got lucky in that I needed to cut many of them down anyway to make them fit along the perimeter, so I was able to cut off the crushed corners that plagued an entire box.
Pictures to follow soon!
