Posted by admin | Posted in Basement | Posted on 01-01-2012
Tags: Building Materials, Construction, Drywall
Ah, a finished basement. What a worthwhile remodeling project. Immediately provides additional, usable living set in the home. And, of course with insulating the exterior walls reduces heat hurry and thus conserves energy. It can be plan of as a stout home renovation project in the winter when folks tend to cocoon more (i.e. fracture at home more) because of the inclement weather.
But, what about the ceiling? Should one install drywall on the ceiling with drywall screws attached the ceiling’s serve beams, to which drywall mesh & ‘mud’ (technical jargon of home builders / renovators for what is a white paste) is applied to where the drywall boards meet, followed by sanding (drywall dust, yuk!) followed by priming and painting with ceiling paint?
Or, should one install a ‘drop’ ceiling with metal rods hung with wires attached to the ceiling’s wait on beams criss-crossing the basement upon which fire-retardant ceiling tiles are placed? In our basement we have both, but the majority of the basement status uses a hung ceiling.
There is more labour required with a drywall ceiling from originate to effect, in my notion. Hard labour. How do they bag the 8 feet by 4 feet drywall sheets attached to the ceiling anyway? Yes with screws, but take about the physical concern. Those drywall sheets are heavy.
And then, believe about the physical process of applying the mud, and then sanding the mud up on the ceiling. Wow! Painting a ceiling is hard enough.
One could say it depends on the spy. Do you want your basement to search for like a basement? Or, do you want to view like any floor in the house? If the latter you will likely want a drywall ceiling. So portion of this is personal preference, ascetics.
However, after going through our renovations, I will never install a drywall ceiling in any basement that we may have in our futures that does not have a ceiling already.
Why? When you are doing renovations keen wiring and / or plumbing, you will utilize countless hours not honest running wires and pipe underneath the main floor (which is your basement ceiling), but you will also need to follow along the path of the wires and pipes to figure out what wire goes where and what pipe is ancient for what. You can’t do that efficiently (and time is the enemy of home renovation projects!) if the ceiling is drywalled unless you wreck the drywall and then patch it all up again.
Also, with modern plumbing you need to have access to the pipes up on the basement ceiling. At least in our house we did. lift for example the plumbing for the existing en suite in our home which we renovated for use by a physically challenged family member. It was completely redone and the bathtub placed in a totally different part of the room.
Our contractors approach is to withhold shut off valves for each hot / chilly line; a very nice approach. If you have a drywall ceiling, you know what that means; yes, you have to break the drywall. If, however, you have a drop ceiling, all you need to do is to fill the ceiling tile, do your plumbing thing and then re-install the ceiling tile (which takes all of 20 seconds) .
So, from a renovation / remodeling perspective, my money is on fall ceilings.
Related posts: