Installing a ceiling part 1

Our kitchen ceiling has been in a sorry state for a while now. It was installed about 15 years ago and has gradually been bowing ominously for some time now. There was no sign of water damage so the bowing was a mystery. K's thought was that mice had made such large nests inside that the debris was causing the acoustic tiles to bend. (everyone has seen the movie Killer Mice assault New England right?) LOL

We have done a lot of home repairs. We have painted, stripped, papered made a deck and replaced our cellar stair stringers. We have never installed 12 inch acoustic tiles. But we can learn. I am confident. K was less confident but has warmed to the idea. So I took 3 days off from work and we began taking down the tiles. Actually I took a bunch down on Saturday to see how it went but there were still a ton left.

Demo has gone really quickly. We have all the tiles down and all the staples and threaded nails pulled out. The latter I think are exactly why the tiles began to bow. The installer used threaded nails (probably quicker) in a lot of places in lieu of staples. Cheater-weeter! I think that the stupid tiles slipped slowly just that wee bit out of alignment over time and once the first few did, it was likely easy for everything to begin to bow a bit.

Now we are waiting. And I HATE waiting. Our neighbor who is a self employed electrician is supposed to come drop the 3 flourescent fixtures so that we can remove the tiles under them and begin tiling the ceiling. It is 9:30. I will admit we arise early. But we also told Eric that! 9:30 and he is not on the job site people. Not even home. Not even answering his dang cell phone. Oops he just showed up! More later!