T-Grid Ceilings in Train Room, Why?

[Anonymous]

If your house is under construction now, don't forget to insulate the garage walls. Most builders won't do it, nor will they insulate the garage ceiling below unoccupied space above the garage. As your garage ceiling is about 12 feet, you may consider having your contractor installing the wall, and then install 2 X 10 ceiling joists to create a ceiling for drywall at a normal room-height of 8 +/- feet. The contractor may then eliminate the normal drywall ceiling at the 12 -foot level. For nominal cost, you could then add an attic drop-down stair, lay some plywood above the joists, and have a ready-made attic for storage. A BIG plus when the "space allocator" (spouse) is complaining that the railroad takes up a lot of room. By ready access to the ceiling from the attic, you can install fixtures, facia anchors, etc. Don't forget to insulate the ceiling, and add heat to the room. Check with your contractor on some trade-offs, but if you are building a house, you won't have the time to build a room anytime soon. Better to "pay-da-man" now, while he can do the grunt work and save your energy for designing and building the layout. It also gets all the messy & dusty stuff out of the way.

[zgardner18]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Surfstud31

Unless you have an unfinished ceiling, i am not really sure why anyone would go thru the trouble and expense of adding a drop ceiling. I considered it briefly to try and deaden sound to upstairs (my trainroom is below bedroom). But I think acoustic foam on the ceiling would work better as a sound barrier.

Just my 2 cents.

The reason that I'm thinking about installing a drop ceiling is because I want to do the whole "shadow box" look and to do that I don't really want my fascia to run all the way up to a 12 foot ceiling. That would look strange. But on the other hand how do I attach the fascia to the T-Grid ceiling for support? Right now I'm thinking that I'm just going to build a box frame over the layout to hold lights and the fascia board, add a thin sheet of plywood on top, and use it for displays. That way I won't need to use a T-Grid ceiling and save a little cost.

Is this a good idea?

[zgardner18]

QUOTE: Originally posted by FrankClark

If your house is under construction now, don't forget to insulate the garage walls. Most builders won't do it, nor will they insulate the garage ceiling below unoccupied space above the garage. As your garage ceiling is about 12 feet, you may consider having your contractor installing the wall, and then install 2 X 10 ceiling joists to create a ceiling for drywall at a normal room-height of 8 +/- feet. The contractor may then eliminate the normal drywall ceiling at the 12 -foot level. For nominal cost, you could then add an attic drop-down stair, lay some plywood above the joists, and have a ready-made attic for storage. A BIG plus when the "space allocator" (spouse) is complaining that the railroad takes up a lot of room. By ready access to the ceiling from the attic, you can install fixtures, facia anchors, etc. Don't forget to insulate the ceiling, and add heat to the room. Check with your contractor on some trade-offs, but if you are building a house, you won't have the time to build a room anytime soon. Better to "pay-da-man" now, while he can do the grunt work and save your energy for designing and building the layout. It also gets all the messy & dusty stuff out of the way.

Frank,

Good point, but I am Da-man. I will be building the house through the company that I work for, but I can't have the room built before inspections or they'll call it living space. Once the house is complete, I will go in and stand up the wall and install a man door. My father was a Drywall/Framer so I was taught the trades and will do all the work on the room myself, and that is good for cost.

Now I did not think about using the space above for a storage. In California nowadays most of the garages are drywalled but not insulated. It doesn't get that cold here but it does get hot, so maybe insulation might just be a good idea. I was going to leave the ceiling height alone due to cost but maybe I will think about it once again.

Last, though I am going to great measures to create this room, but this isn't my dream house, and I'm sure that 5 or so years down the road we just might be moving into something bigger, so I don't want to be doing all kinds of modifications to this garage, for I just might have to return it to a 3 car garage with it comes time to move on. A T-Grid ceiling would be easy to take down too.

[Anonymous]

Zak - sounds like a good idea to me. I suppose it's personal preference in the end. Good luck!

[zgardner18]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Surfstud31

Zak - sounds like a good idea to me. I suppose it's personal preference in the end. Good luck!

Well, I don't know. If I had it set in stone I would have kept it to myself and not pose the question. I'm too new in this hobby to know what's best. I'm more excited to finally have a "layout room" to know any better. You guys should know best-- the pros and cons and all.

[rrgrassi]

Don't forget, the drop ceiling also gives an undocumented, added feature...Cat Food! Your cats will love it, as it gives mice a new hiding and run area, as service guys like plumbers and electricians, and IT guys like myself can tell you, so that means more droppings to fall onto your layout when ever you want to change lighting, etc.

[Anonymous]

Zak - what I mean is you will hear a thousand different opinions in this forum. In the end, unless you are going to do something outright wrong or dumb, it usually boils down to personal preference. I personally don't like drop ceilings unless there is a bad ceiling above it or exposed utilities. A hundred other guys will tell you I'm wrong. In the end, it's up to you. Hope you'll have pics to show when you're done [8D]

[zgardner18]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Surfstud31

Zak - what I mean is you will hear a thousand different opinions in this forum. In the end, unless you are going to do something outright wrong or dumb, it usually boils down to personal preference. I personally don't like drop ceilings unless there is a bad ceiling above it or exposed utilities. A hundred other guys will tell you I'm wrong. In the end, it's up to you. Hope you'll have pics to show when you're done [8D]

Pics!?! heck this puppy will be the the magazine! (if you're going to dream--dream big)

Honestly I have no Idea what I'm going to do. I won't be starting this project until next summer anyway. This topic just came to mind, and I'm just trying to look at the whole picture here. It's like building a house: the roof go on after the floor.

[BR60103]

For those of us with no professional construction experience, the grid ceiling is more do-able, especially with only a single person. I'll admit that mine have a few waves in them, but they do the job.
My current house has a tile ceiling done by the previous owner. I've no way of knowing what's up there and I don't know how to pull a bit off to look into it. I can't even get in to add an electric circuit or two.

[ericboone]

I was planning on doing a hard ceiling because I want to put a valance over my top deck. Around the edge of the room, I can simply support is with cantilevered beams from the wall like the layout levels. However, the center peninsula would be a challenge as the top level of the penisula deck will not have a dividing backdrop from which I could cantilever beams from to support the valance. The traditional design of a drop ceiling would have made that very difficult. However, the CeilingMax product helps solve that. It appears to be only about an inch thick, meaning I can simply put holes through the tiles to access the joist to anchor my valances. The product web site is http://www.acpideas.com/index.cfm?XlinkID=13 Does anyone know the approximate price per square foot?

EDIT: I was poking around the web some more and found this product that is supposed to be equivalent to but 40% cheaper than CeilingMax, CeilingLink. http://www.kensa.com/ They say for 2 x 2 grids, its about $0.75 a square foot. Thus CeilingMax must be aroung $1.25 a square foot.

[Tilden]

I used half a two car garage for a layout once and installed a t-grid ceiling. Kept a lot of dust out, reflected light better and made the garage space warmer. Definitely improved the overall enviroment.

[Anonymous]

THE one gentelman(?) building in the garage bay has the same configuration that I have avalible to me. The last resident did just what you were planning as to wall board on the ceilling. DON`T DO IT! I`ve had to rip out what he put in to make it right. All the upper plumbing was underneath and he also dropped a pipe thru the wallboard and mudded right around it. Plan accordingly! Plan for sweaty pipes(your good brass engine under one!),build the room! Rebuild the services if need be.
LATER!

[MIKE0659]

We used a drop ceiling (T-Grid) in the basement to keep the dust down (Or up, to be more correct.), since we found in the past that the overhead joists and other stuff up there tend to drop dust just from normal movement upstairs. We also wanted access to pipes and wires up there just in case. And you can't believe how much brighter the room will be with that white ceiling overhead.

We love the drop ceiling for many reason, but found after a few years that it also tended to snow very fine white dust over the railroad. We hadn't started scenery yet, but noticed it on the ties, rail and anything else left on the layout.

At first we really didn't make the connection between the dust and the seiling, but if bumper or moved for some other reason, we noticed the fine dust snowing down.

So we decided to do something about it. We got some water-based polyurethane (Less stink) and a few rollers from the local home improvement store to seal it up.

We painted two coats of the clear coat over the ceiling inside the lighting valance, which was all the ceiling over the railroad. It took only a short time to do, but was very much worth the effort. Since applying the clear coat a few years ago, we have had no snow on the railroad and our dust problem has been virtually eliminated.

So once again, a little effort and a small cost, with a good result that is paying long term benefits.

Man, it's the little things. Know what I mean?