I have to think that it was less expensive than repairing a ceiling. Our kitchen ceiling was dropped twice for a total of over 12 inches. Once with formica and then with acoustic tiles.

After taking out those ceilings and the layer upon layer of flooring, we probably gained about 15 inches in our kitchen!

Yep, they were promoted as a way of saving on energy cost and as being easy to replace should they get damaged or broken.
I agree they are ugly. We didn't have any in this house but others we have lived in have and I always hated them....even in the basement. I'd rather look at the pipes and vents systems than those ugly while panels.

Previous owners had the kitchen in our 1920's house fitted with a dropped ceiling in the late 1970's in an attempt to make the kitchen look modern. It also was a way to add overhead flourescent lighting to the kitchen.

I remember my dad putting a dropped ceiling in the living/dining room of the little Craftsman bungalow they bought in the early 50s-- their first home. They honestly thought that it would save on heating bills. They also (sadly, something they came to regret) removed the beautiful wood shelves and posts that separated the dining from the living area to create the "open area" so favored at the time. It was not until years later that any of us understood the value of the original. When they bought the house, it had original everything (including wiring, oy).

Even more sadly-- the area began going commercial, and after my folks retired and moved, the house was bought by the local realtors board, of all things, who literally gutted the house to put in big conference rooms lined with fake paneling. I went back to see it once. That was enough. The house still looks Craftsman on the outside. Walking in is like entering a strange dimension, the insides are like a different building altogether.

They did take out the dropped ceiling though. By that time, it made little difference.

Dayle Ann

Meant to add that when I bought my semi-derelict Victorian, one of the things that had turned other buyers off was the kitchen, stuck in the middle with many doors and no windows because of numerous addons (in the New England style). It had a dropped ceiling so low I could touch it (I am five feet tall), with a hideous 4 foot long 4 bulb florescent fixture in the middle. So 60s.

The ceiling did cover some pipes on one side from an added on upstairs half-bath. I figured I'd rather live with the exposed pipes. The first thing I did after the sale was final was rip out the ceiling and install a nice period-style light ceiling fixture (I had the house completely rewired) and an over-the-sink fixture. Also removed the truly ugly 60s cabinets except for the sink, and put in odds and ends of things as cabinets to test out different arrangements.

Just getting that ceiling out of there opened up the room (the original ceilings are 9+ ft high), and let me see the possibilities. Now I have a plan for remodeling.

It's on next year's list....I hope.

Dayle Ann

I see now. Thank you for the replies. At the school where I teach, there is a historical building that is used as offices and dorm. Dropped ceilings were installed and they do really ruin the look of the building with high ceilings. They were dropped so low that the panels cover about 1/4" top of doors. It looks like that they were put up in order to install flourescent lights and a/c vents. Still ugly anyway. Also what made me sad was that the renovation work was done poorly since there are already cracks developing and plaster in some area is crumbling. Some believe that the moisture problem was not taken care of first and some work was rushed.

Public school? Sadly, they mostly have to go with the lowest bidder, no matter why it's the low bid. Too often it means rushed work by unskilled labor.

A school for the deaf. Yes, they went with the lowest bidder.

Church trustees can also do unfortunate damage to old church buildings in their misguided efforts to 'modernize' or to save energy. I have seen dropped ceilings in many a sactuary that covered literally half of beautiful stain glass windows. I have also seen remodeling that has destroyed architectural elements in both the interior and exterior of many a fine church building. It is mind boggling what damage a few men in suits can do.

Fortunately, many churches now allow...and some insist...that women be represented on their Board of Trustees, Church Councils and other administrative bodies.

Why ask why? We just removed them from the entire top floor of our 1915 craftsman. They covered up perfectly good 9 foot plaster ceiling with picture rail. Of course the damage cause by installing them including nailing through the plaster caused some damage for us to fix.

It feels so much bigger now that we have the high ceilings back. Rumor was it was supposed to insulate the house and make it warmer. Why not just blow insulation into the attic instead I will never understand.

My dad put dropped ceilings and some fake paneling in their 1917 house when they bought it in the early 70's. They could not afford better materials and they could not afford to repair the very damaged ceilings in the upstairs apartment (my guess is that the previous owner didn't get his roof recoated often enough. The house was a SERIOUS fixer upper.) My dad worked two jobs and my mom worked one just to afford it and all of their money went to upgrading things like plumbing and wiring. In the meantime they had to make it safe and liveable there, so drop ceilings went up. I once peeked at what was above them and it was NOT pretty. Panelling hid some of the worst walls.

At least things like panelling and dropped ceilings are reversible so IMO there are worse things for someone to do to an old house. If someone has the money and inclination it's easy enough to take those things down, though what you may find behind is a different story. I always used to dream of restoring that house but they sold it 2 years ago and bought a newer house. My husband and I bought a house built in the 1880's with no panelling or drop ceilings in it. :)

Exactly what happened to the church I am member of! The oldest part is a beautiful house, which the church added on with a larger building. Unfortunately in that progress many rooms were chopped up with walls to make more rooms except for the former living room. I can see in the downstairs women's room that the room was once a large bathroom with a marble fireplace (boarded up and cut up in half with a wall, the other half is in the men's room). The walls were all subway tiles. Sometimes I wish I could see the whole house in its original condition.

As for saving energy, I find it odd that before many churches used dropped ceilings BUT now many churches have huge and high ceilings.

To install new duct vents so you can have air conditioning. Run pipes. I was involved with the restoration of a 50 room hotel (2 baths per floor) to a 22 unit apartment complex. Walls were solid masonry. In order to install all the duct work, plumbing and new wiring required, only thing they could do was drop the ceilings. That said, they still had fairly high ceilings, and because this was funded with federal funds they had to follow the Dept' of Interior's rehab standards so they did not drop the ceilings below the windows and doors. It was only a problem with the front windows and they ended up doing a sort of reversed coffered ceiling: dropped in middle, not along outside window wall. It turned out looking nice, thank goodness.

We live in an 1890 Queen Anne that suffered a nasty mid-70's kitchen redo. The kitchen's ceiling was dropped 18 inches. This let them (1) attach the tops of the cabinets to a reasonably-sized soffit (2) hide damaged plaster from an old roof blowout (3) hide the beam that went in when a structural wall was taken out to make the kitchen larger. The lowered ceiling ate the tops of the window trim, too. (The ceiling fan in the middle of the work area, that hit my husband's head, was the first thing to go when we moved in...)

After we got suspcicious about floor warping above the kitchen and poked some holes in the dropped ceiling, we found out that new beam wasn't being held up by, well, much of anything (a couple of toenailed 2x4's), so we had to install a real beam supported by steel posts going to concrete pillars in the basement. We're much of the way through a full rehab of the kitchen now, and, I have to say, getting the ceiling back up to 9 and half feet where it should be may be the one change that makes me the happiest...

We had dropped ceiling too in our dining room in the house we purchased 3 years ago. Ugly commercial ceiling tiles with huge neons like in an office. Each time we were entering that room there was a feeling of doom and it was suffocating it was so low. Now it has been removed and my boyfriend made a beautiful ceiling...here it is. Now when we entered the room we can breathe!!! and we gain 2 more feet im height in that room

{{!gwi}}

Anicee-
The ceiling looks beautiful. I got a peek of the room with the bookshelves, looks cozy with the sunset rays (right?) :o)

We removed our dropped ceilings to reveal 9 foot plaster ceilings with picture rail. The extra volume makes the rooms feel so spacious.

I had a great attic apartment in a older multi unit house. The high ceiling made the apartment feel more spacious. It also had a really cool loft space with a ladder leading up to it. My land lady passed away and they were selling the building so I moved out. The new owners were going to do work to the house. When the apartment came up for rent I wanted to move back in.....but these idiots put in a drop ceiling that made the apartment look alot smaller......and completely tore down the loft space. There was no banister around the stairway anymore......and they took the carpeting off of the stairs, and the wooden stairs did not look good. Everything that was unique and stylish about the apartment, they ruined. Anyways....yeah, drop ceilings are stupid.