I needed a place to store my cowboy hats.  (Yes, I have that many.)  Being practical, I checked out the closet in my workroom.  Battered wall, no ceiling - I can fix this.

Because there are walls, making a ceiling was easy; I measured, bought a piece of plywood, ordered some new "tin" ceiling tiles off Ebay, purchased some paneling glue, nails and metal snips and began.  I'm not a weight-lifter, so I bought thin (3/8 inch) plywood knowing I'd have to clip off  and file the ends of  the nails on the backside.  Guys can get by with 5/8 inch plywood and no nail clipping.

Ceiling tiles should be centered; this site has some info on setting up the intial tile runs:
http://askville.amazon.com/start-tile-retiling-room/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=9862962

After the centering lines are drawn, apply glue to the back of the center tile, tamp it down and proceed until you must cut tiles.  Set a whole tile right side up  in one of the partial openings, mark the edges to be cut with a Sharpie and proceed as you did for the whole tiles.  When all the tiles are set in place, use a hammer and nail set to punch holes in the corners of the tiles.  Nail the tiles to the boards (no more than 3 nails at a time, if you need to clip them.)  This keeps the tiles in place if the glue fails.  With a little luck, you will have a surface that looks like this.

 

Having built the ceiling, I prepared to install it - and discovered disconnected heating ducts and a lot of unused space.  A friend of mine told me the difference between contractors and do-it-yourselfers is that contractors hide their mistakes.  Yep, the guy who built our house was a contractor. 

We started pulling out the piles and ran across this:


How a pair of briefs got into a conduit in a semi-sealed space, I don't want to know.  After seeing this, I figured it was time for a cold beer.  Reworking the closet wall can wait for a few days.  It does make  me wonder what other secrets await discovery.