07 Tin pressed ceilings

Tin pressed ceilings - 25 January / 12 February 2016

The deconstruction of the tin pressed ceilings started by removing rubbish, old services piping and insulation batts from the attic.
A ceiling sheets measures 1200x600mm and was attached to ceilings battens with an odd hundred nails.
Every room had its own print and also the cornices were made of pressed metal.

I tried several approaches for taking off the ceilings.
Loosening the nails from the attic and then removing the nails from underneath seemed to work best and caused hardly any damage to the sheets.
I worked systematically room by room.
Even though I had removed the dust from the top of the ceiling sheets prior to taking it off, every sheet taken off treated me with a shower of dust.
Mike helped with taking down the ceiling at the Entry Hall, giving him a "taste" of what deconstruction is about.

A minimum roof pitch at the back of the house had allowed for water dripping in through the tiles.
The tin pressed ceilings at the Kitchen, Scullery and Bedroom 3 were heavily damaged and were covered by a suspended gib ceiling under.
The ceiling at the Bathroom had started rusting due to interior condensation and could not be saved.
Apart from 3 sheets at the Living room all other sheets and cornices came out really nice.

Amendments to the layout of the house always show in the original ceilings.
The centre position of the Bathroom stroke me odd but no evidence was found that there had been an amendment in the Bathroom area.
Other than a small amendment to the ceiling at the Dining joinery all ceilings appeared to be original.

The ceilings batts retrieved were fine and could easily be reused, however they would take too much space in storage and were therefore sold on Trademe.