Living the Dream on Lido - Coffered Ceilings

It's been along summer and I've not had much time to blog since July.  Between work, finishing the last house and finally finding and rehabbing a condo near the beach (after a 2 year search) the year has gone quickly.  The good news is the remainder of the year should be relatively uneventful and we are looking forward to spending more time with our friends and family over the holidays.

As with most any project that Jan and I get into the Lido condo has been no different and had the usual surprises some of which were more costly than others.   We also tried some new things to make the property different and have had some pretty good feedback.

The condo was built in the 70's had concrete floors (and ceilings).  Needless to say there were no ceiling fans in the rooms and those that had added over the years were bolted to the ceiling and then the wire run through a metal conduit of sorts until it met the wall.  The wires were then either snaked through the wall to a switch or in the case of the Master bedroom the metal was continued down the wall close to a receptacle and then fan plugged in.  Pretty cheesy to say the least.

Not liking the wires and wanting to hide then we decided to try a cofferred (sp?) ceiling.  This would allow me to hide wires behind boards and give the room an updated look at the same time.  We decided on 1x5 MDF (medium density fiberboard) that looked like wood.  To hide the wire I routered out a groove on the side that would be against the ceiling.  I drilled a hole every 16 inches and then glued the board to the ceiling while propping the board up with 2x4's.  Then 3/4" cove on the inside of the MDF and crown around the outside where the wood on the ceiling met the wall.

The ceilings are 8 ft high so I was able to stand on the floor (with my new hammer drill) and drill holes straight up into the ceiling.  This was followed by Tapcons  and lots of spackle to fill in the holes by the countersunk tap cons.  Once the mdf was up the 5" crown was installed to round out the look which we've actullay beeen told makes the ceiling look taller than it is.  Gloss white paint and we are looking pretty good.  so good we decided to do all the rooms!

The best part is no wires running across the ceiling and no other unit in the building looks like ours and we took it up a notch.