Sunday, the GF and I painted the ceiling in my basement flat black. We used a 2200psi Wagner airless sprayer, and it worked like a champ - far better than I thought it would, to be honest.
I have very low ceilings down there, and when I bought the house, they were dropped and tiled. That made the very low ceilings that much lower. More than that, they were badly tiled, with nasty tiles, and had some obvious and poorly done patching in a few locations.
A few months back, I tore all that down. It was filthy work worthy of Dirty Jobs. Mice had taken residency above the tiles in years past, and they left all manner of proof of their existence behind. When I was tearing the tiles down, I had everything from little corpses and hundreds of thousands of droppings, to cigarette butts and old light bulbs fall on me. Very unpleasant, I tell you. Once the tiles were finally down and bagged up, I had to tear down the framing for the tiles. That wasn’t as nasty, but it was considerably more difficult. Whatever else might be said of the previous owners, they knew how to put up ceiling tile framing. Even so, the tearing down was easy compared to the cleaning up. All that lumber full of nails had to be discarded, and I didn’t want to hand over a bunch of rusty tetanus to those who would take it away from the curb. It took me hours to clean up after the demolition, but I like to think it was worth it.
That was months ago, like I said. Since then, the ceiling has been bare joists and exposed ductwork. From the outset, my plan has always been to simply paint it all black. I didn’t want to drop the ceiling any lower, but I didn’t want to call attention to the exposed whatnot, either. Motivation being what it is, it’s taken me this long to finally get the painting done. I have to say it wouldn’t have been done yesterday but for the insistence of the GF. She really kept me on task. Partly sick, and party just malaise, my heart just wasn’t in it. Now that it’s done though, I’m extremely pleased!
The flat black ceiling retreats far more than I thought it would. Though it’s as dark as it can be, it doesn’t make the space smaller like I was afraid it would. Instead, it disappears and leaves you with the impression that you have a lot more room than you really do. The huge I-Beam and ductwork that stretches down the middle of the room, effectively dividing the space in two, similarly retreats now that it’s all black. I may hang some fabric between the joists to break it up a little, but honestly, that doesn’t seem nearly as critical now than before we painted. I really do like it a lot.
I still need to paint the register covers, and get some good light fixtures, but once that’s done, the ceiling will be finished! On to the walls, the fireplace, the bar and the bathroom after that!
