I'm taking several rooms of suspended ceilings down in an old house (they look terrible). The ceilings underneath are old plaster, some cracked, some lath showing, and need to put something up instead - anyone done something unusual to their ceilings? Saw a picture in a magazine of someone who'd glued aluminum foil (the heavy-duty kind you wrap food in) to their living room ceiling, and it looked great. Another picture showed someone who had put corrugated tin up on their ceiling and that looked pretty good, too. Anyone done something besides drywall - preferably something cheap and easy???

Same with floors...anyone used anything besides wood, carpet, vinyl? Read an article about cork squares, writer swore they lasted for years, warm, pleasant looking, but doesn't appeal to me. What have you done that's unusual (cheap, easy)???

-- Bonnie (chilton@stateline-isp.com), August 01, 2001

Answers

We are remodeling our house and I was just wondering why someone hasent come up with a corragated cardboard that looks like bead board for the celings, this would really hide alought of problems. I am thinking of using that heavly textured wall paper that you paint on mine.

-- ronda (thejohnsons@localaccess.com), August 01, 2001.

A heavily textured ceiling has a greater surface area and tends to look clean for longer.

Whatever novel material you use for the ceiling please keep fire retardation in mind.

-- john hill (john@cnd.co.nz), August 01, 2001.

When we were remodeling a few years back I wanted hardwood floors. I soon found I couldn't afford them. I did go to Lowe's and found some exterior siding that looks like four inch boards side by side in 4x8' sheets. At first my husband who is acarpenter said that was the craziest thing he had ever heard,but I continued to talk and finally to shut me up he said we could try it. He used screws at regular intervals to attach it to the subfloor. Then took some wood filler to add where the two ends butt together. We sanded it all lightly and then put three coats of good polyurethane on it. It's been six years ago and it's held up to all our families' traffic and looks shiny and new when wet mopped. We liked it so much that when we redid the kitchen and computer room and back hall we repeated the process. Everyone says it looks great and seem amazed that the siding on the outside of our house also adorns our floor.

Our house is a almost completely remodeled single wide trailer with various add-ons. Getting the ceilings to carry through was always a challenge. In our bedroom my husband ripped out all the old ceiling board and insulated it well and then we put up the lightest weight paneling we could find. Over that we used the sculptured wallpaper and painted it. It doesn't look half bad. One word of warning though...please be sure your marriage is very strong before you try to hang wallpaper on the ceiling! Best of luck and let us know what you decide. I still have one room to redo.

-- Debbie (dc1253@hcis.net), August 01, 2001.

Oh gosh..we near came to blows over doing the mudroom wallpaper let alone a ceiling! Our ceilings are stucco. Holds dust etc like a vise! they gotta go but not before my ugly carpet gets biffed out. Pine planks are going down this fall (hopefully). My friend painted her aspenite floors (ripped out the carpet..leveled the floors then painted and varathaned). They look like she laid tile or no wax floor. The cost was mostly in the paint. So very much nicer than the ratty carpet she hated that came with her house! Good luck.

-- Alison in N.S. (aproteau@istar.ca), August 01, 2001.

One unique ceiling I have seen was where someone glued egg flats up there after painting them with a novelty "string" paint, it looked kinda fuzzy because it was fuzzy!

-- mitch hearn (moopups1@aol.com), August 01, 2001.

Bonnie, What about just repairing the old plaster with new plaster? You have a beautiful home and plaster walls add so much 'homey warmth'. Plaster is such a great material, it is strong, is more water resistant that drywall, won't sag and shift like drywall, is harder and stronger than drywall and will last forever. Repairing plaster IS something you can do yourself.

-- clovis (clovis97@yahoo.com), August 02, 2001.

You could go to your local library to see what they have on imaginative wall coverings. I have heard of using brown paper bags and scrunching them all up, then ironing them flat, and doing a brown wood stain on it. When the edges are torn all around, it looks like peices of leather! This is supposed to look really nice coupled with dark beams and paneling.

-- daffodyllady (daffodyllady@yahoo.com), August 02, 2001.

We have what is called a knock-down texture on our ceilings and walls. The ceiling is painted the same color as the walls with a semigloss paint. It is very clean and 100% better than the old nasty "popcorn" ceiling junk that was up there before. Our floors are white ceramic tile throughout the entire house - Not a dusty carpet in site! We love it!!

-- Greenthumbelina (sck8107@aol.com), August 02, 2001.

A friend of mine who has a lovely old house, is planning to use the old metal roofing from one of their outbuildings for the ceiling in her living room. She has decorated with an "Americana" flavor. The plan is to attach the metal roofing to furring strips and then put a trim of old barnwood at the top of the walls as a border. She is aiming for a rustic look. It sounds strange at first, but everything else she has done in the house is just beautiful!

-- Jean (schiszik@tbcnet.com), August 02, 2001.

Our ceilings are all wood, some are old barn siding, some are pine boards we had cut on a saw mill, also poplar and ash. Our bedroom is pine boards from skids, my husband cleaned out a five gallon bucket of staples, then planed them. Beautiful and no painting ever. Our floors are vinyl tile that look like marble, black and gray swirl, they never look dirty even when a hundred people have walked over them.

-- Melissa (cmnorris@1st.net), August 06, 2001.

There were several threads about how to make concrete floors (either newly poured or old and cracked) look like any number of surfaces, from slate to brick to tile mosaic. With a little bit of patience, several fiber blades for your saw (old concrete floor) or imprinting pads (new concrete floors), and a handful of easily obtained supplies and paints, you could do just about anything to your floor that you wanted to. Do a search of the archives on "concrete floor" and remember that there were several threads. If I remember correctly, there was one about decorating outside the box. ONe of my suggestions (which I planned on implememnting here until I remembered that I had cats) was to pull up the old carpeting, truck in a buttload of sand, and "plant up" the living room with shallow rooted succulents and potted cacti buried in the sand, which would be piled and layered in a natural fashion, crossed by a walkway of stone to cut down on sand transfer to other rooms. A lip at the edge by the doorways would "hold in" the sand. THe same idea could be extended to include actual landscaping with dirt (if your floors would support the weight (back with pond line to prevent moisture problems if the floor is not concrete) or simple covered with a nice layer of riverstone and rounded creek pebbles, with a paver walkway through it and a few plants potted into in.

As you can see, I am no the typical decorator. I have a thing for being unable to differentiate outside from inside! As for your ceiling, those old tin ceiling tiles were very pretty, and you could make you own for less by buying sheets of metal at the craft store and embossing your own designs on them. They're sold for making pie safes and other "Americana" craft work. For a more "natural" look that would accent the above type of "Floorings", you could paint the cieling a hazy blue, then splatter in with phosphorescent paint (which is whitish cream in color and would not be readily seen during the day) so that at night it would look like the sky. Either spatter randomly or buy a few "sky maps" at an educational store and do it "authentically" using real star patterns. If you want to hide construction while it's being done, or just like the Eastern "pasha" look, hand beautiful swaths of fabric from the ceiling like the inside of a desert nomad's tent - hang from a central hoo out to the walls and down, or stop at the walls. Take them down once a month or so to wash them. Choose the most beautiful cloth you can afford, and if decorating "for good" with this style, make some pillows and low cushion "couch" piles that match and complement the fabric. A few low tables, some incense, and a bowl of figs and there you go!

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), August 07, 2001.

WOW! What great ideas! Everyone, thanks so much - I have a lot to think about now.

-- Bonnie (chilton@stateline-isp.com), August 08, 2001.