PAnelling the ceiling
This one day project spanned 3 days and plans changed everyday. Many people building houses out of school buses don't need to take down the original ceiling and re-insulate because they live in a much warmer climate than we do. We didn't have the luxury of keeping the metal panels already fitted to the ceiling and ideas are limited on the internet. The major website on skoolies that we've consulted during this whole process had post after post about wooden tongue and groove; saying it was the, by far, best option. As budget conscious young people however, tongue and groove was not our first choice because of money alone.
We found some 8X4 sheet 1/8" hardboard that seemed to be able to take the curve when we tested a piece of it. We came up with a plan to cover the ceiling with it that should have installed in just a couple hours and brought home all of the supplies. The full plan is mentioned in the post, Day Eighteen, as well as the details on how we framed the ceiling to fit these panels perfectly. Unfortunately, things don't always go as planned and when we actually went to put the first piece up, it cracked at the curve in the ceiling and the whole plan went down the drain from there. We trouble shot by adding plywood across the curve to lessen the angle, we considered using strips of the panels, and even considered dealing with an ugly uneven, patchy mess, if it meant we could just put something on the ceiling. Truthfully, it was an extremely frustrating and crushing moment to have something we had been building up to for so long, to not be able to happen.
After a few deep breaths, we were calm enough to make a clear and intelligent decision, we headed into town to check out options and surprised ourselves by bringing back 19 packages of pine tongue and groove as well as some more 1x2s to add to the framing.
To save wood we used 6-11" pieces of 1x2 to go width-wise between most of the length-wise boards attached to the metal frame. As well, we added two more full length-wise sections of framing. With this addition we got enough coverage to attach the tongue and groove and FINALLY began work on the ceiling.