I’m creating a kind of coffered ceiling using tin ceiling tiles that I salvaged from the dumpster. This is the ceiling in my studio/workshop. It’s been a lot of work, but once this is finished I think it will add a nice bit of style to the place.

After some construction, I was on the verge of putting up new, normal drywall ceiling and being done. But then “creativity” struck. I found a bunch of old tin ceiling tiles in the dumpster out in the alley. One of my neighbors was just throwing these away! Before I could stop myself, I had pulled the best of them out of the dumpster – 14 in total. They looked salvageable, and I thought I could incorporate them into my new ceiling. It has added significant delay to the whole project, but I think it will be worth it. And besides, I didn’t really have a choice. Whenever it comes down to “normal” vs “bizzaro-creative”, I take bizzaro-creative every time.

The tiles were pretty beat up, and had been handled roughly by the monsters who tore them out and threw them in the dumpster. But they cleaned up nicely.

I used a wire brush to remove the loose paint, and then wiped the tile down several times with paper towels soaked in mineral spirits.

For painting, I just used up old paint that I had. I used an oil-based primer as a first coat. Then I built a frame to hold each tile, and gave the whole thing a nice coat of acrylic paint. It’s hard to tell from the photos, but the color is warm sort of cream-white. I like a light colored ceiling, but that’s just me.

I’ve still got a bit more work to do, but things are coming together. I plan to fill in the space between the tiles with drywall, and then add trim to dress everything up and give it a nice finish. Hard to describe, but I’ll show pictures of the finished result when I’m done so be sure to check back! What do you think so far?

And I’ll end with a question: does anyone else have it happen where you let a fairly standard project snowball due to your own unstoppable creativity? Let me know in the comments. It happens to me a lot.