As Do-It-Yourself projects go, hanging ceiling isn't exactly the first to the forefront. However if you like me sometimes you find yourself doing projects that you never really intended to do. That was the case for my new vinyl soffit ceiling.

A few months ago we hired a contractor to build a screened porch addition for our house. We were limited bugetarily so I decided to dust off my old house painting gear and to tackle the job myself. For the most part the job went off without a hitch, though I did have to take a few days "vacation" to complete the project. In the end I was satisfied with my work but happy to be back in the office.

I thought that the porch project was nearly complete, save for a few finishing touches. Not so according to the building inspector. I found out the hard way that building codes are purposefully vague and certainly not open to interpretation by anyone other than the inspector. To make a long story short I needed to either paint the open ceiling or close it off.

In an effort to appease the inspector I started painting the wafer board ceiling and solid rafters one day after work. After two days I'd hardly made a dent in the job and had used nearly 1 gallon of white primer paint. To make matters worse this was during one of the hottest weeks we've experienced here in North Carolina. I was disgusted, tired and ready to be done with the entire project.

I made a few calls and with the help of my dad determined that hanging ceiling would be faster, but probably not any easier. After a few trips to Home Depot we decided that partially vented vinyl soffit would be the best material to use. The main reason was that it's light, cheap and easy to work with. It's also standard on most entryways and porches which are built by mega developers like Ryland and Pulte.

Saturday we began the job and a mere 12 hours later we were finished. While it's not difficult to hang the material it's very time consuming to measure cut the 12' pieces to the correct length. It also took us quite a few tries before we were able to properly overlap the pieces so that they would lie as flush as possible on the ceiling. Though the job looks great I still need to work on the vinyl around the ceiling fan junction box and to set a few white paneling nails into the overlaps for added support.

So the moral of the story is that yes you can hang ceiling, but bear in mind it's a long hard job that requires many screws, nails and saws.

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