"leeroy" wrote
cshenk wrote:

True and i can think of what I did, ages ago as a poor college student
living in a semi-refurbished attic. The owners bought insulation but no
more. Alone, I couldnt put up drywall on the ceiling. I'd have had to
pay
someone.

Instead, I got a big bolt of flame retardant dark blue solid cloth and
used
a staple gun to put it between the rafters covering the insulation I'd
tacked up there. I left the beams showing as I liked the looks.

Fancy? No, but doable alone with no help and i must say, it actually
looked
alot nicer than it sounds.

I put 3 nails in a 'u' shape about where the rafters hit only a 3.5 foot
'ceiling' then used scrap wood of about .5x1 size set in the nail frames
to
hold it up, and used the nail gun to make 'curtin walls' with more fabric
(this time a small flower pattern of blue flowers with green leaves on a
dark cream colored background).

thanks for the 'non drywall' answer. that's the kinda ideas I'm looking
for. Is Burlap available in a a flame retardant bolt?

Dunno! But you can get sailcloth types that are. They wont be as cheap as
drywall or just regular 'flame retardant material' but they should last
well.

I take it you actually not only want reasonably cheap priced, but
specifically a different look from drywall. It's why I offered up my poor
old college days solution to a somewhat similar problem.

Yep, ceiling is more of a problem- how to support insulation?

Well, once you nail gun it (staple gun if that suits better) to the rafters,
it will sag in the middle unless you support it. Normally this is done with
drywall but I, like you, was dealing with a raw ceiling with just insulation
there (paper toward the inside of the house if you were not sure).

I used unbent metal clotheshangers from folks who did lots of drycleaning.
It's normally real easy to get a grunch of them. Local freecycle for your
area can probably yield 300 or so free ones easy with just one 'want' post.

I used those every 3 feet between the beams before i put the cloth colver
up. Made for what i thought was a kinda unique billowing effect of the
cloth but also took the stress off the staples where the insulation was
drifting down in the center and would have ripped the cloth out.

A nicer look, would have been thin wood (something like molding) applied
*over* the cloth and between the beams and stained same color as the beams.

Yes, I didnt mention it but I got a cheap cherry wood stain and put it on
the beams with a sponge mop. Didnt varnish it or anything, just stained
them all. I had the stain free from Mom leftover from last time she'd had
us refinishing a house and gotten a huge lot for all the deck work etc. (No
worries if that sounds odd, as some here may recall, my Mom and us 3 kids
used to do what is called 'house flipping' now, to make money to live on).

The easiest way to mount that 'molding' is also more expensive. You'd get
enough of it to run all along both sides of the beams in the ceiling, then
come time to put the cross pieces up, just lay them above that (cut so they
just barely fit between beams and lay on the long pieces along the beams).
You can then hold them nicely in place with a nail on each side that sticks
out a bit. These cross pieces now hold the cloth up. How far between is up
to you and your sense of style but you can always add more or move them
around (just lift up and shift).

If you have a grunch of old tounge-n-groove wall stuff in there to remove,
those pieces can make this.

I thought of this pattern then, but a rental I was only going to be in for
at most 2 semesters, wasnt worth that much of my time and the owners were
not about to pay for the wood.

Oh if you ant to just have the crossbars of wood, you can just put 2 nails
(sticking a bit out) at the bottom of where you want the wood, then 2 a bit
higher (1/2 the depth of the wood) to either side and drop it in the pocket
you made. If you mess up and one isnt even, they just lift out and you can
use the claw on the hammer to shift the nails out and re-reat so it's even.

So now you have cheap (material and wire coat hangers inside) or fancy (wood
molding to create a square pattern in each rafter set).

Anything useable for you? You did say 'artist loft look' suits and this is
pretty much close to that but allows insulation yet covers it.

I'll make one pitch though. Please go best 'flame retardant' you can find.
I gather you do not have any electrical lines in the ceiling so it's
slightly less an issue, but the walls can be. In my case, the electrics
were all 3 ft from the devised walls of the attic (used the extra space
behind them for storage). Other than a floor, it truely was an unfinished
attic when I got there with deep eves and only 1 outlet added at the far
end. But hey, it was 25$ a month in 1979 ;-)