Putting up a drywall ceiling frame

We insulated the flat roof. Then we finished that with the installation of a vapour barrier. Now we’re up to the next challenge: how to get to a nice, finished ceiling from that. Despite the availability of different kinds of shelves, we immediately knew we were going the route of a drywall ceiling. We just like a nice, clean ceiling like you only get with the drywall. But first, we need a frame to put the drywall on!

On a side note: music!

In general, it’s not recommended to put the drywall straight onto the beams supporting the floor or roof above, as there’s a risk the seams might crack from the movement above. The solution is really easy though: put up a frame underneath, if you have the space for it. There are basically three options for a regular drywall ceiling frame. The first option is to use metal studs or wooden beams from wall to wall, without suspending them to the ceiling. However, this is only an option for smaller rooms: the longer the span you need, the larger the studs need to be, getting impractical really fast. Recommended for the metal studs is no more than three to four meter, which is not enough for us.

The other way is a suspended frame, which comes in two different flavours: single and double frame. The difference is that the double frame is stiffer and needs less suspending points, at the expense of an extra cost for the upper layer of metal studs. Both are supported against the wall in a profile, and are hung to the existing ceiling or beams (with different types of anchors depending on how much lower you want to go).

Let’s just dive into it: we opted for a double frame in metal studs. First you put up metal profiles against the walls around the room. Those will be the starting point for about everything else, so these have to be perfectly level. Don’t forget to take into account the thickness of your drywall if you’re looking for a certain ceiling height. After that, it’s a first layer of metal studs just above those against the wall. I spaced these a little less than a meter apart.

Each stud I hung up to the wooden studs above, around 1.5 meter apart.

After the first layer, the second layer goes right below the first one and into the profiles against the wall. Those went up 40 – 50 cm apart. I took the length of the drywall panels into account when spacing them, so that any panel will end on a stud. They get connected to the studs just above with some kind of cross-connector.