Installation of waves with vertical and horizontal amplitude on the ceiling, marking the surface, installing the ceiling frame and making waves from plasterboard. With the help of plasterboard sheets, you can create a variety of geometric shapes in interior design. Therefore, this material is often used for the installation of ceilings with unusual configurations. Some structures are easy to assemble, others require a lot of effort and time to manufacture. One of the most difficult coating options is curved ceilings with vertical or horizontal wave amplitudes.
How to make a plasterboard ceiling with a vertical wave
The most difficult thing in such a composition is the development, manufacture and installation of the frame. Here it will be necessary to make perfectly symmetrical lines, otherwise it will be impossible to lay the drywall sheets evenly on the base. This is not easy to do, but the foundation is only part of the job. A lot of time and effort is spent on fixing the sheets on the fabricated and fixed frame. It should be said right away that it is extremely difficult to make a ceiling in the form of a GCR wave with its vertical amplitude. If you plan to make even waves between two walls, a stretch canvas is more suitable for such a ceiling than drywall.
When using gypsum board to create waves, the first thing to do is to make an accurate drawing that will take into account all the design features. It is required to outline many control points, when checking with which it will be possible to check the stages of making the frame.
All dimensions should be maintained with great accuracy so that the frame elements are installed in their places without distortions. An error of 0.5 cm can lead to a difference in the heights of the finished surface at the joints of the sheets. Achieving this precision with aluminum profiles is not easy. For wavy ceilings, special flexible elements are produced, but their cost is quite high.
Installation of drywall sheets on the assembled frame requires an assistant. One of the workers must hold the free edge of the sheet while the other secures his part.
The standard bend of the gypsum board is simple. It is more difficult to achieve its uniformity, especially if the fixed element of the corrugated ceiling is large. Fitting the sheets to each other should be ideal, otherwise it will take a lot of time and a gypsum mixture to putty joints with differences in height. This operation is extremely complex and laborious.
To simplify the task, the waves of the ceiling can be performed not over its entire area, but using only a certain part of the surface. In addition, you can reconsider the way the ceiling is designed and instead of waves, semi-arches can be made, which look original and give dynamics to the design of the structure.
It is much easier to assemble the frame and mount the waves on the ceiling not with a vertical amplitude, but with a horizontal one. Such a composition will allow you to place several levels with hidden lighting on a wavy ceiling.
Do-it-yourself plasterboard ceiling with a horizontal wave
A wave with horizontal amplitude, made of gypsum board sheets on the ceiling, can provide a memorable and unique design of the room. At the same time, the possibility of installation on the base surface of hidden communications is realized: electrical wiring, ventilation, etc. To make a wave from drywall on the ceiling, you will need: gypsum plasterboard, guide profiles, primer and water-based paint, a pencil, tape measure and paint cord, puncher, screwdriver and metal scissors, gypsum putty, spatula and brush, knife, screws and drills.
Ceiling marking for plasterboard wave installation
The creation of a wave on the ceiling assumes the presence of two levels, located in relation to each other with a noticeable difference in height. The installation of a wave-like ceiling should be started with marking. It is executed two times:
- On the inner surface of the floor … Determining the position of the future height difference in surfaces will allow you to accurately calculate the placement of aluminum profiles and gypsum boards of the first ceiling level.
- On plasterboard sheets of the first level of the ceiling … A profile forming the wave surface will be fixed on them.
You can markup in a variety of ways. A curved shape can be made up of arcs. To obtain a wave, you need to draw parts of several circles on the base ceiling, on its first level and on the gypsum board, which are hemmed to the second level. With a ceiling plan, their diameters and center positions can be accurately calculated. This is done in a graphical editor that displays the dimensions of various geometric shapes.
Before making a plasterboard wave on the ceiling, you need to draw a ceiling plan that has proportional dimensions that correspond to a certain scale of the existing structure. Then the desired waveform should be selected, after which the circles of the required diameter are selected by the approximation method: first, a circle is drawn, and then it is substituted to the wave. If the circle touches the wave only at two points, but it is not in the middle, you need to change the diameter of the circle to touch it at three points. After the selection of the circles, it is not difficult to determine their centers and diameters in a graphical editor.
To transfer the resulting pattern to the plane of the ceiling, it is necessary to make a compass. The easiest way to do this is to make a tool from a piece of profile. In addition to him, you will need a drill, pencil and tape. At the end of the profile, a hole should be drilled for a screw, which will need to fix the end of the profile on a drywall sheet. Then, at the required distance from the screw, you need to fix the pencil on the profile with tape. The distance from the screw to the pencil lead is the radius of the circle.
It is convenient to mark the sheets of the second level of the ceiling with a drywall wave with your own hands on a table or floor. The wave on the ceiling should be applied after the installation of its first level, since when installing sheets with a marked wave, the pattern may shift due to installation errors. If not all circles can be drawn on the ceiling due to their centers exceeding the surface boundaries, you can use other marking methods.
If you have thin sheets of plywood or fiberboard on hand, you can make templates from them to outline the wave. They allow you to accurately transfer waveforms to the base ceiling before installing the frame, to sheets of the first and second levels, reducing the time for marking by 2-3 times.
Another way is to mark the waves "by eye". This method is quite common, despite the unpredictability of its result. When using it, a geometrically irregular waveform is initially planned. During the installation process, various errors will surely arise that can be eliminated using putty at the penultimate stage of creating the ceiling.
Production of the first level of plasterboard wave ceiling
To make the frame of the first level, you will need guides, ceiling, additional profiles and suspensions. Before working on the base ceiling, you should draw the contours of the waves, which will help you navigate when placing the profiles. The principle of marking and the rules for installing the frame of the first level are similar to the method of installing a conventional single-level ceiling made of gypsum plasterboard.
A small nuance: in the places where the wave passes, ceiling profiles are installed more often than usual, with a step of no more than 40 cm. The extreme profile, located closer to the line of the ceiling height difference, is attached to its base surface with suspensions more often than others. The optimal distance is 50 cm.
Unlike a single-level ceiling, the gypsum boards of the first tier are fixed on the finished frame not from the wall, but from the middle starting profile. When hemming sheets, their edges should go beyond the boundary of the wave contour. The sheets are fastened in increments of 25 cm, and near the wavy line - 15 cm.
Production of the second level of plasterboard wave ceiling
After making the first level of the ceiling on its sheets, you need to outline a wave and fix a bent aluminum profile along its contour. To bend it, the inner side of the element is notched, and U-shaped notches are made on its shelves. The folded profile is the top of the wave frame. It is attached through plasterboard sheets with self-tapping screws to the ceiling profiles of the first level frame. Its fixation is performed so that between the bent profile and the wave line on the sheets the distance corresponding to the thickness of the sheathing material of the wave end is observed. After fixing the profile, you can mount the frame of the second level of the corrugated ceiling.
Its profiles can be positioned similarly to the elements of the first level, and cut so that after installing the gypsum board there is still space for fixing the lower part of the wave. The profiles are fixed to the ceiling using adjustable spring hangers.
Then the frame is sheathed with plasterboard sheets, cut along the contour of the wave. To minimize flaws during installation, it is recommended to trim sheets with a margin of 0.5-1.5 cm, their final adjustment will be made after sheathing the end of the wave.
After that, the bottom of the wave frame - a bent profile - is attached to the fixed sheets of the second ceiling level. A bunch of bent wave profiles with vertical struts is required only when the difference in the curved ceiling is more than 20 cm in height.
For cladding the vertical part of the corrugated surface of the ceiling, an arched sheet of 6, 5 mm or a regular sheet is used, which is notched from the outside. The frequency of notching increases with decreasing bending radius of the sheet. If the wave on the ceiling has bends of 3-4 m radii, the gypsum board is abundantly moistened with water and fastened without cuts stretching after a few hours.
Plaster of the ceiling with a wave of plasterboard
For ceiling putty, gypsum and acrylic compounds are used. The process of finishing a gypsum plasterboard ceiling with a wave takes longer than installing it. The most difficult thing is to putty the end of the wave itself and its abutment to the lower and upper levels of the ceiling.
If, when covering the end of the wave, any wood materials such as plywood were used, then the putty of the wave should be done with an acrylic compound.
How to make a wave of plasterboard on the ceiling - watch the video:
After the successful completion of the work, the ceiling surface must be kept until completely dry, sanded with an abrasive mesh, remove the resulting gypsum dust, primed and painted with interior paint according to design requirements. Good luck!
