We’re getting really, really close to finishing the first floor of the house, and it’s really, really exciting.  After we got the kitchen in working order, our next focus was on the living room and dining room.  That meant finishing the drywall, painting, putting up trim, and figuring out what to do about our ceiling situation.

The electricians had to cut holes into our living room and dining room ceilings in order to update the wiring.  This is what we were left with.

What to do?  Drywall over the entire ceiling?  Try to patch it?  Cover it somehow?  If you’ve ever drywalled a ceiling, you know it is anything but fun, so that was our last choice.  And, because the existing ceiling was textured, it would have been challenging to try to patch the hole and then recreate the same texture.

So, weighing heavily the time/effort factors, we landed on option C: cover it up.  We put up some of our drywall scraps up to cover the hole, and started our search for our new ceiling.

In poking around online, I came across these decorative foam ceiling tiles on Amazon.

It was a great discovery- I had no idea that foam ceiling tiles existed!  They were pretty reasonable considering the fact that they were going to save us hours and hours of work, and hopefully look pretty awesome.

The size of each tile is 20″ x 20″, or 2.78 sq ft.  Since our living room and dining room are roughly 14′ x 14′ each, I figured we would need about 71 tiles per room (14×14 = 196 / 2.78 = 70.50).  I always tack on extra for scrap, so ordering two boxes of 40 for each room worked perfectly (4 boxes total).   The first two were priced at $88 per box ($176 total), but by the time I bought the second two, the price had gone up to $100 per box of 40 ($200 total).  Should have ordered them all in the beginning!  Oh well.  We have about 10 tiles left over, which may be good in case one of them gets damaged down the line.

PS, they also sell these tiles individually if you have a smaller space to work with.  They seem to be $2.50-$3.00 each.  Here’s the link: Ancona White (Foam) Ceiling Tile – Decorative Ceiling Tile (single tile) The catch is that the shipping seems to be the same whether you order 1 or 40!

Anyway, I wasn’t sure what to expect when ordering them – how thick they would be, how heavy, etc.  When I got the box in the mail, I was pleasantly surprised.  They were super thin and lightweight, but appeared to be sturdy and realistic.

These tiles were so easy to work with.  All we did was put adhesive on the back of each one and pressed it onto the ceiling.  I’ll admit, we didn’t follow the instructions on how to ensure the tiles stay square with the wall, but it turned out fine.  We started with one square in the middle where our light fixture was, and cut a hole out inside the circle, which actually lined up perfectly with the pattern of the tile.  We used standard scissors to cut the tiles as needed.