If you want to make a custom ceiling for a room in your home, consider a suspended ceiling. Suspended ceilings aren't expensive to make, and you can install them yourself, saving labor costs. You can create a stylish, inexpensive ceiling that you can be proud to live under and to show off to your friends and family.
Instructions
1. Measure 4 inches down from your current ceiling joists. Mark the measurement on the wall with a pencil. Using a 4-foot level, draw a line around the room from the mark. Take more than one measurement to make sure the lines are level.
2. Nail molding to the wall studs. The top of the molding should line up with the top of the lines you just drew. At the inside corners, install the first piece of molding as usual, then butt a second piece of molding against it to make a corner.
3. Calculate how many panels will fit in the ceiling. Measure the space across the room from one joist to another, and divide the result by the panel length. For example, if the room is 100 feet across, and each panel is 20 feet long, you can fit five panels in the ceiling. Calculate the entire panel length across the room, and subtract it from the room's dimensions to determine the perimeter gap in each wall. For example, if the room is 2500 square feet, or 50 feet long by 50 feet wide, and your total panel length is 49 feet, the perimeter gap is 1 foot. If the perimeter gap is more than a few inches short of a full panel, use partial panels on the edges of the ceiling to make it look more balanced.
4. Install a runner according to the partial or full panel length you have decided on for the perimeter gap. For example, if you are going to use a partial panel that is 10 inches in length, measure 10 inches from the wall, and install a runner. Measure 4 feet from this runner, and install the next runner. Install runners by pulling them over the ceiling joists. Keep installing runners until you reach the opposite end of the ceiling.
5. Support your runners with wire. Screw eye bolts into every third joist, and fasten 16-gauge wire to the eye bolts. Tie a string tightly across the room from the moldings every 8 feet, and use the string to level the runners as you hang them from the wires. When each runner is level, bend the wire through the nearest hole in the runner, and twist it around itself three times.
6. Install the cross tees by fitting their hooks into a slot in the runners. Space cross tees 2 feet apart.
7. Install the center panels to balance the ceiling. When these panels are in, cut runner pieces to connect the grid of runners and panels to the perimeter molding.
8. Install fixtures and ductwork. Connect fixtures to a conduit box, and put the box in the place of one of the panels. Connect the box to a junction plate. Move the ductwork down to just above the top of a panel. Position the diffuser where you want it on the panel. Trace the diffuser bottom, and cut a hole based on the tracing. Install the diffuser.
9. Measure and cut panels for the perimeter gap, and install them.
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