Living Room Ceiling

For today's project, we decided to tear down the horrible "octagonal tray ceiling" in the living room.  This silly thing not only looked totally idiotic, but also completely destroyed any air currents created by the ceiling fan when it was turned on, so it had to go.  Since that room is now half framing anyway, why not now?

We moved the rest of the living room furniture into the future dining room, and actually set it up as a living  room, so we'll actually have a real room to retreat to now when we need to get away from the construction.  I should take a picture tomorrow, since I didn't do it today.  Then Jeff started tearing down the sheetrock on the living room ceiling, exposing the most completely absurd framing job either of us had ever seen.  I would have taken more pictures, but my camera battery died (the new one, I swear, I'm battery-impaired or something) and it wasn't recharged till after everything was down.  

Seriously though, it was like some guy just randomly started throwing 2x4's up there and when it looked like he had enough he covered it with sheetrock.  It was all made of random pieces fitted together every which way, with the triple 2x4 that was ostensibly holding the frame to the ceiling not actually attached to the ceiling... so the frame was really holding it up....  no wonder it had separated about 1/8 of an inch since we moved in.  And other, totally useless, boards were nailed to the wall with like, 15 nails.  Of which 10 didn't actually hit anything but sheetrock.  Yeah.  

So, here's a couple pics showing the living room after the ceiling was taken down and we'd hauled all the debris out and put it in the truck for Jeff to take to the recycle center in the morning.  You should have seen the pile, but unfortunately that potential picture was lost to the dead battery as well.   Maybe I'll take a picture of the loaded truck in the morning.