Help me identify and find a ceiling tile

After two feet of snow melted off our roof, it proceeded to rain every day for the past week. This revealed a slight leak in our roof when it resulted in water damage to three or four of the ceiling tiles in our kitchen. I don’t know what the tiles are made of, but when they got wet, they took on the consistency of wet cardboard.

I’m happy to replace the tile once i find and fix the roof leak. But i have no idea where to get a replacement for this tile.

Here’s a picture I took of the pattern. The areas which appear dark are acutally low spots. These appeared when I increased to contrast to bring out the pattern detail. It’s a 12" by 12" tongue in groove tile, with a decorative square center and embossing along two sides that looks like small pieces of wood.

Can anyone identify this? The house was built in 1960, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be an old, discontinued design. But if finding the pattern is a lost cause, I don’t know what I can do. Replaing these tiles with plain ones wouldn’t look right. And replacing all the tiles to match would be too difficult, since there are about 350 of them.

Install a Ceiling fan or a light :slight_smile:

Armstrong and Emco come to mind as manufacturers-there aren’t too many companies that do the 12" square T & G product.

Matching that pattern is going to be all but impossible IMHO. If the tiles haven’t become broken, you could try letting them lie on a flat surface until the moisture evaporates. If they’re still up but sagging badly, make a brace from a scrap of plywood and a 2 x 4 cut to length. Place an old towel on top of the plywood scrap and then stick the 2 x 4 under it to hold the tile flat against the ceiling while the water is taken in by the towel. If they have any structural integrity, glue them back in place, trimming off broken tongue/groove as needed. Then seal the water stain with a product such as BIN 123 (white pigmented shellac) and paint the tile a white or off white to blend in (or paint the whole darn ceiling).

Good luck.

Well, unfortunately, they fell to the floor in chunks. They lost so much structural integrity that they just disintegrated when they fell out and hit the ground. Two of them did, anyway…and are now in about 200 pieces big and small. There are about four more that are slightly sagging and water stained over about half their area.

As for the fixture suggestion…I’d think about it, but it’s in a corner.

The one bit of hope I’m hanging onto is that I’ll find a box of spare tiles when I climb in the attic to track down the roof leak. I haven’t seen anything like that before, but I wasn’t looking.

I appreciate having the names of the tile manufacturers. Perhaps it’s a discontinued style of theirs.

I would suggest taking your photo (or a complete tile if you can remove one without damaging it) to your local Home Depot or building supply store. Talk with someone in the ceiling tile department and they may be able to give you more information about the manufacturer.