Let’s face it. You wouldn’t like the sight of insulation as a ceiling. Especially not if there’s a metal stud frame underneath.
So we did what any logical person would do.
We put up drywall against the frame.
But first, music!
If you read up even the tiniest bit of creating your ceiling with drywall, you’ll see the recommendation for sheets with something called “4 x ABA” (well, at least here in Belgium, I have no clue what’s it called in other countries). It means that your sheets have a tapered edge on all four sides , opposed to a regular sheet which has only the long sides tapered. They’re more expensive, but sure worth the extra price in convenience when you need to tape up the seams.
Next thing we did was go out and buy an el cheapo drywall lift. After a little research I found there are two categories for those lifts: el cheapo and professional. There really isn’t much in between, and with the pro having roughly 5 times the el cheapo price tag (or more!), it was an easy choice.
Being all set up now, the process was easy. Get a sheet on the lift, hoist it up against the frame, do the last touches of positioning, screw. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Of course it’s not that simple. It already starts with the location of the studs. For this I used a little trick with a cord. If you work from left to right, I first screwed the leftmost screw in, but only partly. As this is right next to a sheet you’ve already done, you can be quite sure you’ll end up in the stud. I then wrapped the cord around the stud just right of the sheet, and onto the screw still sticking out a bit. That way you can get the cord following the middle of the stud, so you can screw practically blind every 20 cm.
Another point of interest is lighting. In general I try to put up all the cables before lifting any drywall, then get the drywall in place and finally create the hole for the cable to go through. It does require access to the cable after screwing the drywall sheet in, so sometimes it won’t be possible. In that case I measured, measured again, drilled the hole before putting the sheet on the lift. When the sheet is going up, you now just have to make sure the cable ends up in the hole. Just make sure you measured well, as you risk ending up with a cable slightly off from where you wanted it.
Armed with that knowledge, the very first board went up, up and away!
That wooden board you see? That’s for the future light fixture above the island. I’m a bit hesitant to hang stuff up to the drywall as-is, so I put some reinforcement behind it. I know there are lots of screws and plugs and whatnot that will allow you to hang stuff to drywall. This didn’t take me long, and will give me some more peace of mind I hope (right? right?). I also did this where the extractor will come, as I really don’t trust to hang that weight onto drywall at all.
After board one comes board two. After board two comes board three. You catch my drift, in the not-so-blink of an eye we were finishing up the boards.
And with that, we’re ready for the next step! Unless of course I did something terribly wrong, in which case you’ll have to tell me before I can rip the ceiling back out…