Using Acoustical Tiles to Repair Peeling Ceilings
Do you have a problem ceiling in your home? You know what I mean: a ceiling that looks terrible no matter what you do to fix it. A ceiling with cracks or chipping, peeling paint. You fill the cracks, scrape off the loose paint, sand smooth and repaint. A few weeks later: Deja vu. The best solution to all this? Just cover the old ceiling with a whole new surface. The easiest way to do the job is with acoustical tiles and trowel-on adhesive. The adhesive grabs immediately, so there’s no fooling with staples or nails.
Of course, adhesive won’t work if the old paint is peeling off in sheets, but it holds fine if the paint is only failing in spots. The thickness of the adhesive even helps smooth out slight irregularities in the old ceiling.
Best of all, the job really goes fast. With a helper at your side, you can probably finish off a ceiling with tile in less time than it would take to repair and repaint.
The key to a neat job is a little planning before you start. Measure the length and width of your room and multiply the two together to get the area of the ceiling in square feet. Then buy enough tile to cover that area, plus about 20 percent. This extra will allow for a few mistakes, and for fitting around the edges. It should also leave you some extra tiles for any necessary repairs in the coming years.
I like to work with foot-square tiles, because they are easy to handle and easy to plan out. The object of your planning is to avoid having a row of skinny, skimpy-looking border tiles around the edges of the ceiling. Here’s how to avoid that problem:
Measure the midpoints of all four walls and, using a chalk line, snap a pair of center lines across the ceiling. This should form a cross, dividing the ceiling into four equal quarters.
Now measure from one of these center lines out to the wall. The dimension will almost certainly not come out to an even number of feet. What you’ll probably get is something like 7 feet, plus so many inches. If the inch part of your measurement is greater than half a tile, great. You can use this chalk line as is, to guide your first row of tiles.
Then measure out from the other center line. If the inch part of the measurement is less than half a tile, you’ll end up with a row of skinny border tiles along that wall and things won’t look good. Solution? Snap a new chalk line half-a-tile to one side or the other of the vertical center line. Ignore the old line and use this new one to guide the installation of your tiles.
Now you are ready for the installation. Start at the intersection of your guide lines in the center of the room. Using a narrow putty knife, put five dabs of ceiling tile adhesive on the back of a tile. Make the dabs about the size of a half-dollar, and put one near each corner of the tile, and the fifth in the center. Then just press the tile in place, aligning its corner with the intersection of your two guide lines.
Place another tile next to the first, then another and another, running all the way out to the wall (forget about the border tiles for now). Make sure this row follows your chalk guide line.
Next, go back to the center and lay another row of tiles perpendicular to the first along your other chalk line. From here, fill in the quarter of the ceiling between the two rows. Be careful to slide each tile in place so all tongue-and-groove edges interlock, and don’t use so much adhesive that it oozes out between the tiles.
After filling in the first quarter of the ceiling, do the other three. If you have a helper dabbing on the adhesive and handing you the tiles, you should be able to cover the average room in well under an hour.
Now for the border tiles. Cut these to size with a saw, or score and snap them with a sharp utility knife. Don’t try for a perfect fit, or you won’t be able to slide them in place. Instead, cut them about a quarter-inch undersize.
Then glue them up just like full tiles, using just two or three dabs of adhesive. Once all the border tiles are in place, cover any gap between them and the walls by nailing up a wooden molding. Finish this before installation to avoid getting any paint or stain on the ceiling tiles.
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Tags: acoustical tiles, ceiling, ceiling tiles, peeling ceiling, repair ceiling, square tiles