The rest of the dropped ceiling

After the laundry room ceiling was in place, we then went to drop the ceiling above the tub. That was easy enough. We dropped it to be about 10" lower than the rest of the bathroom ceiling for a stepped effect.

Then came the rest of the bathroom ceiling.

We decided to do this in three parts, since the space was larger than the laundry, and would no doubt be the heaviest pieces we'd have to hold in place while leveling them- before nailing.

The good news was that we discovered that since the door to the laundry was separated by a wall, we didn't have to match the height of the laundry ceiling as we had previously thought. That was good news as we could raise the height by a full 3", giving a little more exposure to the top of the window, where we want to not crowd out our trim.

The hard part was that the ceiling on the east side of the room turned out to be a tad bit trapezoidal at the top of the room, off by about 3/4"- smaller closer to the East wall-- which was lucky for us, because if the trapezoid was larger towards the wall, I have no idea how we would have gotten the ceiling frame piece in at all. Serendipity.

As it stands, we lifted the first piece and set it on top of our two ladders, then we climbed up, lifting the section with us, with the air hose for the nail gun delicately draping over Hub's left foot where he could reach down for it, not dropping the ceiling on his head which would no doubt throw me off of my ladder as well, killing me instantly.

We both lived.

The smartest thing we did was get 4 2x4's in place in each corner before we got started so we could reach over and lodge the 2x4's under the floating ceiling while we adjusted the height and measured for level. (note from DH: That was smart, but the smartest thing we did was get a chop saw so that DW could make those nice accurate cuts that allow tight clearances and ceilings that almost don't need supporting.)

Those 2x4's were sorely needed.


Once this piece was in place the next two were easy. On the last piece we decided to be a little clever.

The last piece was the rectangular area above the entry to the laundry/bathroom, about 42" x 5'. We decided to raise this area an additional 8" to give the additional step down. Then I nailed the floating corners into 2x4's I dropped from the original ceiling joists. Damn, no picture. Maybe later today I'll get one (check back soon as we'll be adding it to this entry).

Bathroom almost ready.