On many of the pages of this construction series, I have been making the 'excuse' that I'm 'busy', so can't spend too much time on this work. That's very true, of course, but it's actually not the only reason for this most recent long delay. The next step is the ceiling, and to be honest, I've been dreading this step. Drilling holes in concrete to put a zillion anchors in place is not my idea of a good time, and when the concrete is overhead ... Yuck!

So I just kept postponing the job. And even during the past two winters, when my life would have been so much improved by having an insulated ceiling, I still didn't 'get around' to it! But a casual conversation I had with one of my neighbours recently, put a bit of a different light on this situation. He is a tradesman, working as a roofer. I was chatting with him 'over the garden fence' a while back, and mentioned that my next step was to do all this drilling to anchor the ceiling. He said "Why on earth would you do that? You don't need to drill into that concrete. Just glue your ceiling into place!"

I just laughed at him. "C'mon, you have to be kidding. I want a nicely insulated ceiling; so I'll need a bunch of attachment strips first, then the thick insulation, then vapour barrier, then the final decorative surface ... it'll weigh a few hundred kilograms easily. Just glue it? And then sit there forever after, with all that weight just 'hanging' over my head? No way!"

He looked at me like I was from the stone age. And I guess, with my knowledge of construction methods being just whatever I picked up decades ago in Canada, perhaps he's right. He came over, looked at the projected ceiling, and said that it would be no problem at all to glue it in place; modern glues were more than strong enough for such a 'lightweight' job. I was still kind of sceptical about this, but then, a short time later, I talked about this same thing with another one of my neighbours, this one a young boy doing a renovation in his home. He had just finished doing a ceiling job ... with adhesives. Not an anchor bolt, or any kind of concrete screw, in sight. I went over to look at it, and it sure seemed to be pretty solid ...

So ... long story short, I redrew my 'parts list', headed to the home supply center, and ordered up the supplies; some wooden strips, and bag of insulation, and ... a can of K10/A concrete~wood glue.

Here's the first test strip. It's a piece of wood about 1x4 (or whatever that is in local numbers), being glued up to the roof:

But - no matter how strong this stuff in the can seems to be - there is no way that I can 'sleep' without those strips being physically attached too, so at one end I have it screwed to the wall with an angled plate:

And at the other end screwed to the wall studs at that side:

The 'span' is just shy of three meters. And, as this wood is very thin, and thus doesn't offer much gluing area, I've put a couple of 'plates' in the middle of each piece. I cut a shallow notch in the top edge of the wood, and screwed a metal plate in place. These are just some plates I found in the hardware store; I think they are called 'mending plates', and this isn't what they are designed for, but the point is just to provide more surface area for the glue.

And because they are full of holes, the glue squeezes down and gives everything more 'grip'.

After that first sample strip dried, it really did seem to be strong; I couldn't budge it at all. I knocked a couple of nails into it, threw a rope over them, and started swinging around ... No problem. It seems as though I got good advice on this, so went ahead with the rest of the ceiling ...

The room angles off at one end, where the stairwell hole is, so I 'broke' the pattern and did that section at a different angle. You can also see the first sample insulation 'batt' in place ...

Here's an overview of the room just as the final couple of strips were going in place. I'll be losing around 4" in room height, but there is still plenty of clearance.

That test batt is pulling at its staples, and I think it wouldn't be a good idea for me to put those all in place just now, so I'll let that job wait until just before I'm ready to put the covering layer in place. Haven't quite decided what to use to cover this ceiling; I want something fairly bright, not expensive, and ... not too heavy! But for now ... I'm off to that family reunion!