Is it possible to ‘un-do’ a vaulted ceiling? This is the first house we built and thought we would like the open-ness of the vaulted ceilings.
Well, a few years later and we don’t like it. But, we like our location and the rest of the house is good.
Our great-room is about 17 x 30 feet. It’s shaped sorta like a T on it’s side. So the long part is the living area and one handle of the T is the dining and the other is the kitchen.
We like the layout, but would like a more cozy and better defined living space.
So, part of the coziness we figured we could get if we could lower the ceiling and then use firs or drops to define the spaces a little bit better, but leave them connected so the flow still works.
The way our ceiling/roof is designed, it’s like a roof in a roof. In other words, there is airspace above the vault and below the roof. Make sense?
Replies
seen nobody has answered yet. did you post this in breaktime. there you will get good help too. one of the majors is a man who is a designer of trussses, which sounds like what you have
yes you can drop a ceiling in many situations,
If you built the house you should still have engineering or specs around that tell what the truss roof system is. Constact that truss manufacturer give them all the info you can , builders name, job address, etc. and ask them how much weight you can hang from the bottom cord of each truss
but you know it is interesting. most of the people I work for want vaults, and I have not had anyone ask to go back to a flat
good luck
I posted in Breaktime and got some good feedback.Vaults are "in", but I believe it to be almost like a fad. We did it because the rent house we were living in at the time had a vault, but it worked in that space. The rent house was 20x30, our great-room alone in our current house with the the vault is 20x30. It worked in the space of the rent house, but does not work here.I prefer the more traditional home with lower ceilings. Not necessarily flat, but lower.
Hmmmm, not an easy job, by any means. I would run 2X10 joists perpendicular with your existing ceiling rafters and rest them on jack studs. Nail the jack studs into your gable studs which slope to the top of the room. When you no longer have room for a joist at the point where the vault continues down. You will intstall tail joists resting on joist hangers which will be fastened to that last common joist, and face nail them into the vault rafters.