Anatomy of a ceiling repair, stage 1

We had a weekend full of demolition and construction. It looked like a rather small crack. Really, how much work could it be? But before making his run to Lowe's, my husband had to cut out the bad part of the ceiling to know how much insulation and drywall to buy. So, we took out one of the beds from the boy's room and draped everything else. Then my husband got to work with his cutting tools. Here is the crack that started it all.

Cutting out a circular hole.

Getting help from son L and daughter G.

Surveying the damage.

The top part of the following picture clearly shows the particle board that is the underside of our new roof. In the bottom part of the picture you can see some damp and moldy insulation pulled aside. The roofers took out a top layer of insulation that was wet, but apparently there was more.


Next my husband cut a square hole and pulled out all the icky insulation.



Finally he was able to make his trip to Lowe's!! Here is the new insulation going up.



And after that the new drywall, cut to fit.

Ta-da!! The new drywall in place, ready for taping, mudding, sanding and painting. Or maybe not????

Unfortunately, this last picture clearly shows how the edge of the new drywall is a good half inch lower than the rest of the ceiling. There were no wooden studs right on the edges of where the new piece of drywall went in, so there was nothing there to screw it into. This coming weekend my husband is going to take the new piece of drywall back out, insert more wooden studs, and then put it back up. This took us late into the night on Saturday, and since there was drywall dust everywhere, we put C and L to bed in our bed and we slept on our hide-a-bed in the family room.

I'm very thankful for all the hard work my husband did to get the project to this point, and I'm happy knowing that icky insulation is out from above our boys' heads. Lord willing we can complete stage 2 this coming weekend and stage 3 the weekend after that!