Kitchen Ceiling

When we moved into our house in 2001, the kitchen had a circa 1970's suspended ceiling. You know----the ceiling is dotted with flourescent light fixtures, then covered by a metal grid which suspends sheets of frosted plastic. It must have been pretty cool when it was new, with the whole room full of light radiating from the entire ceiling. But it ate up almost a foot of the height of the room, was yellowed and dated, and gave the room an unpleasant cave-like atmosphere. John's been working this project little by little for a while, and suddenly this weekend I realized I was rapidly losing my chance to take a "before" picture.

The big gray patch used to be a hole going into the ceiling. There are cracks in the old plaster-over-lath ceiling, screw holes and pencil marks from the suspended ceiling, and cracked and chipped paint. The ceiling was going to be a royal pain to return to any sort of paintable surface, so we decided to put up ceiling tiles. Here they are in their ungrouted and unpainted glory:

Only two more rows to go. My husband is immensely clever (and he does good work, too.)