Ceiling is level!!

3. June 2008 by admin.

Once I took down all the layers of the ceiling (suspended ceiling, cardboard tile, 4 layers of strapping) it was pretty obvious that the ceiling wasn’t level or plumb. Joists were different depths and in general, the ceiling was lowest in the center. The joists had sagged a bit in the center which is fairly common in a 90 year old house. So, I bought a nice laser level on ebay (got a really good deal of course ;)). I fastened it about an inch below the lowest part of the ceiling onto a wall stud. The laser level only takes about a second to level itself and shot a laser across the room for me to work off of. I basically kept the lowest piece of strapping (the long thin boards that attach perpendicularly to the ceiling joists) where it was and based every other point off of how far down the laser was off of this board. I marked a line on my straight edge and went around the room doing this. I used either shims or 2×6’s sistered to the joists to bring the level of the ceiling down in the corners where it was quite a bit higher than the center of the room.

It took a couple days to do this as you can imagine but I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. Some of the recessed lighting is up, I’m hoping to finish that tomorrow.

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