Great news!

You've seen our ceiling tiles.  They are so beautiful.  I'm so happy they were installed because they completely destroy all the vintage character in the house, activating my gag reflex regularly, forcing me to keep sick buckets in every room.

Or maybe I mean that I hate them.  You might say, Starr, ceiling tiles were all the rage, just like all the shabby chic chalk painted furniture is these days. People will be laughing at YOU and talking about your bad taste in 30 years!  


As long as I don't paint a fine antique, I think no one will be laughing at the furniture I paint. It will be *that* timeless. It'll be the awesomest furniture ever. So there.  Anyway, you've changed the subject.  Those tiles have got to go.

See those babies?  Awful.  And they drop the ceiling by a few inches, too.

But we got great news.

First, something ugly, though.

The roof above the kitchen is flat and damaged (we knew this when we bought the house), meaning that the tiles below the bad spot were wavy and damaged by water.  We pulled the tiles down because I wanted to make sure we could be aware of any more water.  No water for months, thanks to drought and then no snow.  Recently, though, we did have a small leak during a big storm.  After a heart attack inducing quote from the roofer ($5k for this portion, $11k for the whole roof), Ryan did an excellent repair job with a pot of tar.

Before you get all up in my case about not having a fund to cover an $11k roof, I'll let you imagine a low income, and then let you be amazed by all the work we've paid for in cash in the past 10 months.  Believe me, we'll be scrimping and saving for that roof--Ryan'll be starting back up his pet massage business, and I'll be selling "I'm a nagging hag" services to tired wives with lazy husbands--but right now, it's gotta wait.

But let me get to my point!  Recently, I woke up in a panic. What if these tiles have ASBESTOS in them?  I know we have asbestos in the duct insulation--we won't touch it, won't mock it, won't even tell it dirty jokes, so it'll leave us alone. What if, though, it's in these tiles we pulled down?  I think I'm getting a cough. Is that because of the invisible asbestos dust??  The addition was done in 1983, which is smack dab in the middle of a lot of legislation banning the use of the material, so there was no way to really know without testing.

So we got the tiles tested for $20.  If the answer had been "yes, you have a cancer-causing agent in your tiles", we would've been able to leave the other ceilings alone, and just deal with this deteriorating one for the bargain price starting at about $1500 for masked men to come in and remove it.  Remember E.T. at the end where there's plastic covering everything and E.T. is in the freezer bag or whatever?  That's what our house would've looked like.

No need to worry. There is no asbestos in our tile!

We got brave and yanked down some sagging tile in the bathroom and look what we found!

Actual ceiling.  I'm sure it's damaged, but I'd much prefer flaking plaster to ugly ass ceiling tile.  And now, because we have no asbestos, we can get a dumpster and demo to our heart's delight without fearing the EPA's fines of $25000 for improper disposal of the stuff.

Ryan is (not) excited about this work.  I am elated.