Changing out Drop Ceiling Tiles

{Giveaway is Closed}

The winner is #164:  Lee in Ky!  Congrats, Lee!

One of the last things Dad and I did before my move in date, was change out the ceiling tiles in the den.  Well, most of them anyway. We still have to fix the ones where the light fixtures are attached and the ceiling vents, so there’s a little more to finish out before they are completely done. But, it’s amazing the transformation of just changing out the saggy old ceiling that was there since probably 1979, when the house was built.  It was a mess up there.

Here’s the old, saggy ceiling tiles, which were very yellowed and just plain disgusting.  I’m so glad I was able to change them out, they feel so fresh and clean  now.  Thanks to being part of Lowes Creative Bloggers team this month, we were given a giftcard to do any project we wanted to.  Bingo!  This was at the top of my list and I’m so grateful that I had enough to cover this.  Cost for the ceiling tiles was just under $250.   I think it was worth it to change them out, makes a huge difference.

I did go in and roll white ceiling paint over all the gridlines to freshen them up too.

Then, one by one, I popped out the ceiling tiles. They were very brittle from age and lots of gunk was on top of them. I wore my safety glasses to keep stuff from flying in my eyes.

My dad is a pro at giving directions, as you can imagine.

I took them down and he toted them out of the house and stacked them up.

Me and my safety glasses.

And pretty soon we had a bare ceiling with all the duct work showing.  We left up the light fixtures for now and will get those changed out soon. If the ceiling just had open wood up there, I would have considered painting it, but all the duct work is up there too, so I’d rather keep the drop ceiling for now.

There was so much debris up there that fell out every time I pulled out another one.  Lots of vacuuming going on afterward.

And one by one, those ceiling tiles went back up. It’s a matter of just inserting them back into the empty space and letting them settle into place. Not hard, but takes some patience to get them all in place, since there are wires on many of the ends of the grids that you have to work around.  And the ceiling tiles are a little bit fragile, so you have to take care of the edges of them.

We went back after all the big tiles went in and cut these smaller pieces.  I took out the old ones and drew a template for the new ones from those.  We ended up getting out the table saw and it worked well for cutting these partial tiles nice and straight.  I popped them all back in one at a time.

And now I have a fresh new ceiling that looks tons better than the old.  No more sagging and yellow color.

We will fill in those holes very soon and it will all be finished with clean new tiles.  So glad I decided to tackle this one now instead of later.  It will feel so much better. You can see the difference in color on that one to the left of the vent where the light fixture is now.  Much more drab and dirty.

I love the new clean ceiling that I got with these Armstrong commercial ceiling tiles. These are just regular commercial grade 2×4’ ceiling tiles, #933 if you’re looking at the store.  They were $37.00 for 5 boxes or more (contractor pricing).  We used 6 boxes to complete this project.

Thanks to Lowes for supplying the giftcard for October for this updating project.  It was the perfect finishing touch for my new den furniture.  It will feel so much better in there now. I love being  a part of Lowe’s Creative Ideas blogger team.

Here’s some great news too!  Lowe’s is giving away to ONE of my readers a $100 giftcard, so you can get busy on a project of your own.  Just leave a comment telling me what needs doing at your house. I’ll choose one winner at random in a few days.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Giveaway is sponsored by Lowe’s.  U.S. resident addresses only, please.   I received a giftcard for my project, but was not compensated for this post and all ideas and opinions are my own. 

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