Dead air space, raised panels and fancy ceiling

[peternap]

In our burb house, I had a couple of ceilings that had been damaged during a storm and leaky roof. I replaced the roof during the summer but had been putting off replacing the ceilings. I hate sheet rock work.

In the meantime, I've been doing a lot of research on insulation for the barn house. One thing that keeps coming up is dead air space. It;s as important as the insulation itself.

Anyway, my wife wanted a fancy ceiling in one room. She wanted raised panels on the ceiling .....

I ran across 3 pallets of brand new interior raised panel doors ranging from 12" to 20", all 6' height, at the habitat store. After some skillful negotiating , we settled on $2.50 per door.

I bought all 3 pallets. The idea is to seal all sides and edges with latex paint, glue foil on the back of the doors and mount them on the ceiling with blown insulation on the attic side. The room happens to be 12' so the doors work out perfectly.  All that's left is to put crown molding around the edges.

The doors will be mounted with glue on the edges so I have a good seal. It should almost double the R value and I only lose 1" ceiling height beyond what sheetrock would have been.

The doors are hollow core of course.

Lining them up on the ground, they look almost exactly like the ceiling picture she wanted me to copy.

[desdawg]

I suspect they won't weigh any more than the drywall. How were you going to fasten them? You may wind up with some screws where you don't want them and a hollow core door doesn't give you much surface to countersink into if any except on the edges. You may have some challenges there. I like to recycle material and I suspect you will work it out.

[peternap]

In fact Des, they weigh less than drywall. Kind of surprised me. Attachment won't be much problem. I can use finish screws through the edges and simply fill the countersink when I tape the seams.

[desdawg]

Tape is going to stick OK?

[peternap]

I did a test piece and it seems to stick fine. I will not paint the face side until I've taped it. The primer is fairly rough and the masonite seems to be porus enough to grab the mud.

[glenn kangiser]

Interesting idea.  Sounds like it will work.