Old Original Metal Ceiling

Nothing excites me more than finding original old history and restoring it back to its formal glory days. If you have been reading my story, then you know my husband and I renovated on an old downtown building over a two year period. If you are just joining us you can catch up here.

These pictures still amaze me. WOW, what a difference. It reminds me of where we started and where we ended up. This renovation was so worth it. Let me walk you through our metal ceiling restoration project.

Let The Renovations Begin

First things first, that drop ceiling had to go. I could see through the missing ceiling tiles that there were old metal tiles hidden away above there. Oh, how I couldn’t wait to expose them.

Look how gorgeous these beauties were. Why would anyone ever cover these up! Well, let me show you why.

As it turned out, this building had been vacant for decades before the previous owner’s bought it. When they purchased it the roof had been damaged. In a combination with the building being abandoned, and having a flat roof that started to hold water the roof leaked causing water damage to the metal tiles that were beyond repair. So they had no choice but to repair the roof and cover the beautiful tiles.

And here is what we were left with. Gaping holes in the ceiling.

If having missing tiles wasn’t enough there was the issue of the roof drain pipe, right in the middle that had to be dealt with along with the HVAC system.

Ya’ll I could seriously hear my husband saying “I told you so”, without ever uttering a word. What he did say was, what now? Hmmm, now we pick ourselves up from total disappointment, dust ourselves off, literally and find a solution.

Well, that solution took tons of research from one end of the internet to the other and shopping old antique malls and anywhere I could potentially find tiles that matched. To no avail, I had no luck with my search. I found plenty of old metal tiles, however none that matched. Did I mention we not only had one type of tile but four different kinds on our ceiling? Lord help me, we just purchased this building and the first project just hit a major roadblock.

The solution, I will find someone to replicate the original tiles and replace the missing and damaged ones. After tons of research and phone calls, I finally found someone that sold replicas of old ceiling tiles after months of searching. I couldn’t wait to tell Garrick (my husband) the good news. All we had to do was take a picture of the existing tiles so the company could find the match. Easy enough.

Well, roadblock and decision time again. The tiles in our building are unlike any they had ever seen and very unique. All I could think was, of course, they are. Why would anything be easy? Here were our options.

1. We could pay to have dies made from an original tile and they could replicate as many tiles as we needed for a hefty price or
2. We could replace all the tiles in the building with replicas they already had dies for at the same price.

I wanted option 1 of course. How could you restore something if you took everything out that was original? Well, my husband wanted option 3. Wait, what, there’s no option 3 I told him. Option 3 was to have never removed the drop ceiling in the first place. Lol too late now, no turning back and were defiantly not paying money to replace the drop ceiling. Guess which option we went with.

That’s right, option 1. After six long months, the tiles were finally here. I have to say, my husband gives me a hard time, but truly he’s the best. He also reminds me when I tell people about our ceiling tile renovation how many tiles there were missing. 78 to be exact, he’d say, as if that was a difficult problem or a strain on our sanity, marriage, and finances during that time.

Here is a comparison of the original tile that we sent to the company. They used it to cast a dye to make the replica tiles. Wow, what an amazing job.

So now let the work begin.

This was such a long process and so much work, all to bring the originality back to this beautiful building. And it was worth every penny.

Now that the ceiling tiles had been replaced, we were ready for paint. This decision was also a tough one. Ultimately we choose to go with the color from Benjamin Moore called Cheating Heart.

Well, that’s it. The ceiling was completed and it turned out amazingly stunning I must say. Now on to the next project, restoring the brick wall. Check out that story here.