Daily Home Renovation Tips

Replacing ceiling tiles is actually pretty easy.

Like anything in life, taking on a task which one has never done before can be both exciting and stressful. How do you know you can actually do it? How do you know you won’t mess up? How do you know that if you do mess up you can fix it? These are questions that come to mind, regardless on the simplicity of the task.

So, for us we had some ceiling tiles where there used to be lighting in the basement. We move the lighting and were left with tiles with holes in them. Initially the approach was to simply place those circular while caps over the hole.

However, with just a little (and we do mean just a little) more effort, the tile can be replaced. There is a light receptacle in immediately above the tile on the right, so we will leave that one for now. We will replace the tile on the left.

Ceiling tiles typically come in packages of eight 8 foot tiles. Some basements use these lengths as is. Of course, not our basement. For us, the frames for the drop ceiling are 4 feet apart. So that means we have to cut the tiles. Oh joy.

So, step 1, remove the tile. Don’t throw it out. You will actually need it again before you are finished.

For step 2, take the old tile into the work area.

Next, for step 3, take our one of those 8 foot long tiles from the package and lay it on a flat surface.

And, step 4, place the old tile on top of the new one. Yes, that’s right. You are going to use the old tile as the template to know where to cut the new one. You see, it is human beings who install the drop ceiling. And, to err is human. So you can bet that the drop ceiling beams are not perfectly aligned. By using the old tile as the template you can cut the new one with confidence that it will batch the space that you are trying to fill.

Tomorrow, we’ll finish this simple home improvement activity.