I can hardly explain how excited I am to have these four buckets of Firefree Intumescent Paint in my studio! The first demolition project I undertook was tearing down the drop ceiling; I was so happy to expose the beautiful tin ceiling hiding up there. I love the charm of pressed tin so you can imagine my displeasure when the building inspector shared with me that the drop ceiling was actually a fire barrier between the commercial space below and the residential apartments above. Apparently, although it was dreadfully ugly, it was a required safety barrier. When we were discussing what could be done now, his first recommendation was to put the drop ceiling back up. That didn’t sit well with me so I asked him for other options. There were a few but they were expensive, labor intensive or both but the inspector mentioned an architect might have other ideas so I called a local architect who has lots of experience working with old buildings. Darren Lathan, of Nverse Architects mentioned a product called intumescent paint that can be applied directly to the tin and, should it ever be exposed to fire, it will expand and provide a fire barrier. I watched a lot of videos (like this one) and read the data sheets provided by the company. It seems a little like sorcery but, you know, science! After getting approval to use this product, we ordered it from CA and it arrived today. Of course the drop ceiling hid all sorts of necessary but unattractive things (plumbing and electric pipes, dryer exhaust hoses from the upstairs apartments, HVAC ducts, etc.) so the other big effort is rearranging all of that so it can be boxed in and mostly hidden. It would have been less expensive and much less labor to put the drop ceiling back up but I think the building would have been sad to hide her beauty again.