I bought a single story/slab house with drop ceilings everywhere but in the bathroom. The drop ceiling, while in OK shape, is punctuated with dangerous DIY wired ceiling fans/lighting that all needs to be redone anyway. Is there any justification for keeping a drop ceiling? Here's all I can figure: "It's there to hide something" What, the entire 1200+ sq ft of ceiling needs to be hidden? I've pushed some of the tiles and found a few boo-boos up there. I feel like if there's something bad enough to hide, I should fix whatever it is. "You will need to fix your walls after" The walls are crazy 70's paneling that needs to go anyway so no worries there. "Where will you hide wires" If I care about something enough I'll drop it down the inside of the wall. How would you hide wires with a drop ceiling? If anything up there has to come down, you'll need to cut the track and stick conduit on the wall for it to look decent, or run it down the wall, which I can do with the attic anyway. "Thermal plane, hot layer, insulation or some other whatever" Right now it's -colder- up there than the roomspace. An HVAC vent is leaking up there somewhere and I haven't figured it out. I was going to open it all up to save some summer cooling $$$ but I found some big weird ceiling hole into the attic that the DPO had cut and I just tiled it back for now. "It's too much work. You are stupid: what can you possibly gain from this, besides a bedroom that isn't topped like an office" Vertical storage? Taller kitchen cabinets? Enough headroom for jumping jacks/pullup bar? Walking across rooms without hitting my head on ceiling fan globes? I just don't understand drop ceilings in a residence outside of a basement, for utility access. Am I missing something? I used to install computer networks, I've been in hundreds of drop ceilings. They're good enough for makeshift/improperly run wiring and whatnot but I'm past that stuff now.

There was a thread from 2004 about this and the answer was to find an electrical outlet to see which side had the stud and the measure 3/4" to find mid stud and then to measure either 16 inches or 24 inches from there for the other studs. Problem for me is that the wall I have has NO outlets. My magnet adheres to every inch. It's the only wall I can hang peg boards for all my tools. Any suggestions , please? Thanks!