What can go wrong

Well, I helped the Freygangs with putting together their house a bit more. They had finished quite a bit since I had last seen the house. They had removed the rotted wood on the wall and patched some of the other problem wood. They were just finishing putting in the studs for the drywall. Jim had some thicker than normal plastic that we put over the insulation. The drywall went up just fine.

We put on the mud and journeyed onto the next room where we were to install a dropped ceiling. It didn't go as planned. Some time was spent figuring out how to work out the details.

In the end we were to put studs horizontally around the room ceiling, then studs across. Well, first we had to find the wood. A storm kicked in and stopped us from going to pick up some wood using the truck.

The 16 penny nails were OK, but were painful after the first 2x4 ... going into the second was tough, especially since we were hammering up. It was tough work. We had to negotiate around items in the room and the lack of connection boards.

Jim had to move a circuit box away from the wall. The kicker was copper pipe that was in the way of the cross beam we needed at the 4' mark. There was some closing panel on the duct that also was in the way we later discovered.

We had to saw, cut, and chisel out the long T-like section into the beam. This weakened the beam for sure. I shoved it into place and it held. Who knows why. Jim was looking around for screws instead of 6" nails we were using. There was a possibility we would hit metal from the duct. The board dropped while we were away.

It split into two parts ... OK, but one half smashed the cap and top of spray paint. It was leaking black paint all over the area in a mist. The bookshelf, table, and decorative shelf were all spattered, as well as gift bags . The basement was then filled with paint fumes. After this fiasco, we called it quits.

Oh, yea ... paint mess.
board snapped in half
The latitudinal line of metal near the insulation in this shot was the other section we had to chisel out.
Some of the boards were great to use, others, not so much. All the ceiling wood will be hidden by the dropped ceiling, so it doesn't have to be pretty.