When choosing home improvements projects for the home, in addition to paying attention to the walls and floors, be sure to look up. Most people overlook the value that ceilings play in the overall appearance of a room and the home as a whole. In fact, making changes to ceilings is actually exciting in that you have so many opportunities and many projects can be done by you.
Let us say that you have a home with a transitional style, one that is a perfect balance of old and new. Now, you want to create something unique in a particular room, some type of project that would stand out while maintaining the integrity of the transitional style. For this, we will use the dining room as a great example although based on the actual material chosen you could enhance ceilings in virtually any room.
Today, you could visit your local home improvement store and in the tile or ceiling area, find a multitude of material options. For instance, you could buy copper or tin squares that could easily be installed to create a new ceiling. In fact, you should look at what Armstrong is now offering. This company has developed one of the easiest yet most elegant ceiling tile systems on the market. Once the entire ceiling is done, the entire room looks rich and sophisticated.
Now, if you had a kitchen or dining room with a Tuscan theme, to complement the oak cabinetry, tile floor, tile countertops, and splashes of bright red, yellow, orange, black found in roosters or flowers, you could choose copper or tin tiles to install. For this, you could to with a simple tile that has an understated look or tiles that have been punched with a specific design or pattern for a little more drama.
Another option is to stucco your ceilings, which looks beautiful in any room. Typically, people will choose stucco to replace outdated ceiling material such as popcorn used in the 1970s. If this is your situation, the most important thing is first to determine if your popcorn ceiling contains asbestos. This cancer-causing material was commonly used in the late 1960s to the mid-1970s in ceilings of this type and what happens is that once the material is disturbed, the small fibers become airborne, breathed in, and then people become very ill and die.
You can contact specialists that would take samples. If the ceiling were proven to contain asbestos, you would have only two options. The first would be to leave it alone and choose a different home improvement project. The second would be to hire a professional who is trained and licensed to remove asbestos material. If the ceiling had asbestos, never try to remove it on your own in that it is truly very dangerous.
Now, if you find that your ceiling has no asbestos, then you would scrape the popcorn material off and using stucco material that would then be applied onto the ceiling in sweeping motions using a trowel. Another great material is wall mud, a material that dries hard, and can then be painted. Regardless, with the transformed ceiling, all the other elements of the room would have a completely different look.
