Installing Suspended Drop Ceilings

Splitting the difference

Since we already laid-out our design on paper we pretty much know how long our connectors will be on the outside edges of our walls but there are always variations in your walls so don’t sit and cut all your pieces and try to install them.

You should install a few tiles in your grid as we were talking about earlier and this will square your grid up. You can pretty much install all of the tile right now but since that takes time you can get away with a few in each corner and a few in the center.

Check the alignment of your center grid with your walls and at this point you can make any adjustments by sliding the whole grid up-to about an inch to get it in place.

Just like when you were putting up your main rails you will need to cut the clips off of your 2 foot pieces to get them into the perimeter molding that we first attached to our wall. However since we are splitting the difference between each side of the room you should leave the clips on each sided and cut the rail in the middle that way you can use the scrap cut piece on the other side of the room.

This doesn’t always work out but if you cut the clips off of your 2 foot pieces now there will be no way to use them in other areas of the room.

Aligning your first edge.

Start in one corner of the room and place your first cut piece in place and use your string line clip to secure it to your perimeter molding.

Now move to the other corner of the wall you are working on and install a cut piece in that area and secure it in place with a clip.

Finally insert another piece mid-span in the center of the length of wall you are working on and secure that piece to the perimeter molding with a clip.

The line of your first main rail should now be parallel to your wall.

Now check all of your distances on the other three walls that you have not started working on. 

They should all be aligned and square with pretty much equal distances. If not this is your last chance to make an adjustment to the Grid before you start cutting all your outside connector pieces.

You may need to slightly twist or rotate the whole ceiling or slide it in one direction.

Once you are happy with the position go back to the first three connectors we installed and connect them with pop rivets to the perimeter molding.

You can now move directly across the room to the opposite wall and repeat the steps of securing and pop riveting connector pieces to hold the whole ceiling grid in place.

Next we will discuss cutting tiles to fit into the smaller spaces.