A drawn-out ceiling renovation ends on a high note
After smashing away at plaster and a popcorn finish, the repair work began
The rustling of the plastic drop sheet had me spooked.
I was standing on a ladder in the living room of my east Toronto 2-1/2bedroom home, using a hammer and chisel to chip away at the corners of what had once been a popcorn ceiling. Weeks earlier, my plan had been to cover the ugly, haphazardly sprayed-on white stuff with drywall, but I’d been convinced to tear it all down following the discovery of plaster and lath and a shoe box-sized hole.
Since then I’d spent a weekend with my cousin and my boss, smashing the plaster and popcorn ceiling with hammers and crowbars. Now, alone on this Tuesday evening, I was chipping away at the more stubborn bits of ceiling in the corners with my pry bar.
The wind gusted through the vents in the attic above and buffeted the dust-caked sheet hanging between the living and dining room, causing it to rise, slowly, as though an invisible construction worker was strolling toward the kitchen to inspect my work.
This was normal, but I didn’t know there were vents in that part of the house. For all I knew, it was the ghost of owners past.
Luckily, only the walls saw me jump.
Long after I’d confirmed that the breeze was not a supernatural event, I was left dealing with the earthly problem of repairing my ceiling.
The following Saturday, I began trying to close the living room ceiling back up. Fortunately, my cousin who had helped me with the demolition continued to make time for the repairs. He was a living and breathing how-to video for each step of installing drywall, but the trade-off was having a witness to all of my mistakes.
For instance, prior to putting up the drywall, my cousin had advised me to scan for finishing nails that had come loose during the ceiling demolition. I’d gone around tap-tapping them in with a hammer or ripping them out with a pry bar, so the drywall would be flush to the beams above. But as we worked, my cousin kept finding nail heads poking out.
“You said you did this side, didn’t you?” he asked at one point.
When we secured the vapour barrier (long sheets of plastic used to prevent condensation getting trapped above the drywall) by firing staples into the beams, it was unfailingly my staples that jutted out crookedly and needed to be hammered in.
I had a feeling I was slowing the process — and indeed it took us a day and a half just to start installing drywall.
I was again frustrated while attempting to accurately drill in screws while balancing on a ladder.
Drawing a chalk line on the drywall was supposed to be helpful, but my brother-in-law (who was inexperienced like me but generously offered to help) and I both made uneven lines and still repeatedly missed the mark.
I quickly learned, from my cousin, that the “tape-and-mud guy will take care of that” is the solution for when a screw’s out of place. (I made a mental note to pay someone to do the messy job of applying layers of mud — drywall compound — into the seams, pressing tape into the mud and sanding it all down.)
It took us several weekends (with breaks to accommodate weekend plans), but finally we had all the drywall in place and I felt like I was getting a handle on the process. My cousin and I shook hands and toasted our hard work with bottles of beer. Then we circled a date a couple of weeks away to do it all again, this time in the dining room.
When the time came, there were no discussions or guessing. Anyone I could persuade to help I got involved — my cousin, my brother-in-law, my boss and two friends (I have a lot of outstanding IOUs). In one day we had the vapour barrier up and had gotten rid of 20 heavy-duty bags’ worth of demolished ceiling. By the following weekend, the drywall was up and I’d spray-foamed insulation in the gaps where crown moulding would go.
I paid to have the crown moulding installed and drywall taped, mudded and sanded. Then it was time to put the moulding pattern across the dining room ceiling — and by now I was handling a mitre saw with confidence (though I still don’t trust my measurements enough to cut to my pencil marks without double checking) and no longer hesitated to fire the nail gun. Friends were joking with me that I’d be the project lead by the time they were ready to do their own renos.
I’m still far from an expert and can spot my mistakes in just about every cut or nail.
My wife says no one will ever notice except us and I like that idea — that my errors will stay between us, the four walls and, of course, my new ceiling. Matthew Chung, 33, is a communications manager living in and attempting to renovate his first house in Toronto’s east end. His occasional column appears Friday. You can follow his progress on Instagram @mjechung.