A two-day reprieve

Well, the Top Brass were SUPPOSED to arrive today - or, at least, that's what they TOLD us. Turns out they don't arrive until Tuesday, so we could have been working on the basement this afternoon instead of sitting around in the living room waiting for a rental car to pull into the driveway. Silly parents. At least I know where the War Department gets it from...

Anyway, it hasn't all been lying about on our bums. We've been quite busy, and so has the plumber.

Oh, before we get into it: the pictures in this post may not be up to the usual scratch; my camera is in the shop getting cleaned, and won't be done until tomorrow. So all of the pictures in this post were taken with the old piece of shit we all knew and hated.

So, we had a little extra job waiting for Leonard when he came on Thursday. The sink in the bathroom upstairs hadn't been draining properly for months, and because we had a rubber P-trap on it, we couldn't really snake it ourselves. Also, I had really no interest in doing it with that damn pedestal in the way. So we figured we might as well get the professional to do it, seeing as he was in the house anyway.

Even so, I really have no idea why we ever thought it would be a straightforward job. Nothing else in this house has been, is, or ever will be, and this was no different. He got the pedestal out of the way okay, but then noticed that the pipe in the wall was really corroded and cautioned us (well, Amy - I was at work, getting the story via a stream of increasingly hilarious emails) that it might be difficult. Then, while he was snaking the drain, his auger got stuck in the pipe and promptly broke off. ("Oh, dear," Leonard said. "That'll cost you.") So he had to break open the wall and replace the entire pipe:



I thought we were done with this drywall nonsense, I really did. Anyway, you can see how much fun making THAT patch is going to be.

Oh, and before I forget, take a wild guess what was blocking that pipe... that's right, about sixteen pounds of hair. Guess whose hair?



I haven't had hair that long since my head-banger phase in 1991...

Anyway, that little job took him most of the morning, but by the time he was done, he'd hooked up the shower and installed the toilet and vanity in the downstairs bathroom:





Man, I'd forgotten how much that camera sucks. I wanted to take a picture of the whole bathroom so you could see what a nice job Leonard (and us!) has done, but that camera couldn't take a decent picture of the inside of a lens cap. Piece of shit.

That said, it's time for another edition of everyone's favorite blog feature, infrequent though it may be,

The Injury Report

So, we've been painting the sills and trim around the windows in the office, and the combination of the plywood and the paint we bought just hasn't worked very well. I finally decided to just use the same paint we used on the walls in the laundry room for the last coat or two. Before I could start with it, though, I had to sand down some of the more egregious brush marks and whatnot. So I was sanding furiously along the top of the big window when I rammed my hand into the lip of metal on the edge of the window. It took a nice big gouge out of the back of my thumb, but it was actually the impact that hurt more than the cut.

Still looks pretty impressive, I think:



Anyway, may or may not get to the trim around the office side of the bathroom door tonight.

My money's on probably not, but don't tell Amy that.

Read more...

Okay, so NOW we're back.

All right, all right. You can all just pipe the hell down now - here's your stinking update.

Despite the lack of bloggage lately, we have been making progress. Well, okay, WE haven't been making much progress, but our drywall guy's a freakin' machine. If only the damn mud didn't have to dry between coats...

So, the last post of any substance involved clearing out the scrap drywall and doing a little prep work for Tony the Drywall Guy. Well, needless to say, between the time we originally contacted him (before we went to Australia) and the time we called him back to start the job, he'd forgotten who we were and where we lived. Fortunately, he was still willing to do the work.

And wow, what great work this guy does! Here's a little "time lapse" slide show of the past four weeks:

Round One:





Including all his prep time, that took him about five hours. We would have considered ourselves lucky to do that much in five WEEKS.

Round Two:





All that took him about three-and-a-half hours. Yeah. He showed up at 4:30 and he was gone by 7:00. No shit.

Round Three:





That was about another three-and-a-half hours. And that was it. He was finished the job. Oh, of course, he also mudded up the big piece we put in the upstairs hallway:



And, thanks to him, we didn't have to worry about overlapping the drywall and the shower edge, or using a ridiculous amount of caulking.

Before:


After the first coat:


I'd tell you what we paid him, but you wouldn't believe me. Hell, I still hardly believe it. Seriously, he was that cheap. Hell, I would gladly have paid him FOUR TIMES what the final bill was, just to avoid having to do all that ourselves. And there's no way we could have done anywhere near as nice a job. Anyone need a mudder? Cause we know the best one in town, no fooling.

Of course, now that he's officially done, we no longer have any excuse to avoid getting back to work. And after drywall, the next step is...

Well, see for yourself:



We spent the long weekend working our way through that five-gallon bucket of drywall sealer/primer. Yeah. Five gallons of it.

Two coats.

On everything.




Good times, good times.
Read more...

We're baaaaack....

Well, we're back from Australia and about as fresh and functional as can be expected after eight planes, two rental cars, a 24-hour train ride, and a grand total of about 31,824.6 kilometers (roughly) traveled. (Not including the ride to the airport and back, of course.)

Which is to say, not much.

We didn't have a great deal of energy or wherewithal to get cracking this past weekend, having arrived home after that last, brutal flight on Monday morning, but we did manage to get something done.

Two trips to the local recycling/drop-off yard later, we've cleared out the basement of all that drywall scrap, and taken most of the bags of trash to boot:





It was a pretty good use of a Saturday, I suppose, but I couldn't help thinking of what I was doing LAST Saturday...



Mmmm.... flies.

If you want more pictures of our trip, hang tight: we'll be uploading them soon enough.

We'll be back with regular updates as soon as the jet lag wears off. I reckon that'll be about .... oh, August.
Read more...

Drywall's done, and we're outta here!

The last thing I wanted to be thinking about while we're traveling was the last bits of drywall that still needed to be done. (Could I have made the tenses in that sentence a little more awkward, you think?) So while the War Department was preparing the house and our housesitter for our absence, I went downstairs and put on the old Carhartts one more time, just for fun.

I'm happy to report that the drywall is officially finished. Well, it's finished being installed, anyway. We still have to get Tony in to work his magic with the mud and whatnot.

Anyway, there were only four pieces left, most of which were small and boring, so there isn't much in the way of interesting pictures for this post. Just so you know...


The piece that required the most work to finish was the last bit of the bulkhead in the laundry room. I had to install a complicated little nailing edge to protect the wires and still leave room for various cables and whatnot.



Looks pretty snazzy, I think. If you're wondering how we plan to tie in that bulkhead to the existing wall and finish off the wall by the stairs, well, so are we.

I also installed the little piece of drywall over the door to the workshop, and the big piece on the workshop side of the entrance. Neither of which makes for a good picture (or any picture at all, really) so let's just move on.

The other complicated task was to finally get the cable lines all squared away inside the electrical cabinet, and put the last piece of drywall over the bulkhead beside it.



That's a whole mess of cables there, but there's not a whole lot more we can do about it.

And just in case you thought I was kidding about the amount of scrap generated by an off-size basement ceiling:




So, yeah. That's the state of the basement at the moment. We're off for two weeks to see my big brother get married in Tasmania. (Awesome! A 15-hour plane ride! Joy!) When we get back, it'll be all systems go to get the drywall covered up, the doors installed, the carpet laid, and the trim put in.

It's gonna look nice. Really.

See you when we get back. Read more...

Another weekend, another piece of drywall

Yes, that's right. We managed ONE piece of drywall this past weekend. But to be fair, it was a REALLY tough piece.

Remember this?



Yes, that really was ... uh ... god, I suck at math ... um, close to EIGHT months ago. Yeah. Anyway, if you don't recall, that's the hole we had to cut in the drywall (plaster, actually - more on that in a bit) so the plumber could run the vent stack for the new bathroom up the wall, through the attic, and out the roof.

Well, we wanted to make sure we had a goodly amount of time in which to tackle drywalling over that particular hole, so we waited until this weekend. And it's a good thing we did.

Saturday started with a trip to, of course, Home Despot, where we picked up a couple of 2x2s and a few steel brackets. We need these to create nailing edges for the drywall to screw into. (As a general aside, anytime you have to make an extra trip to the hardware store to pick up material just to make sure you have something to drive screws into, you're in for a long day.)

Once we got home, it was time to move all the stuff out of the front hall, and hang a sheet of plastic across the entrance to make sure the dust didn't coat the entire living room. We - okay, the War Department - initially thought the dust wouldn't be too bad, given that it was plaster we were dealing with and not the dust factory that is drywall, but within about thirty seconds of starting to work, I knew we'd need a dust barrier.

The first step was to even off the sides of the plaster with the existing studs inside the wall. We hadn't been too fine with this when we first cut the hole as we were more concerned with just opening up the wall for the plumber. Of course, now that there was a pipe running up the right side of the wall, this was a little more difficult that it would have been if we'd just cut it better the first time. But, armed with a drywall saw, a sharp utility knife, and the godsend of a woodworker's rasp, I managed to trim both side edges flush with the studs. Of course, I managed to hurt myself (that's right, the Injury Report makes a triumphant return this post!) and cover myself with a thick layer of plaster dust in the process, but if nothing else, home renovations are sacrifice personified (that's deep, I think I'll get it put on a T-shirt or something).

Anyway, with the plaster trimmed back, it was time to install the nailing edges. Of course, this wasn't quite as easy as just lining up the 2x2 with the edge of the existing studs - oh no. You see, the plaster on the walls averages 3/4 of an inch thick, whereas the drywall is a 1/2-inch. Yes, I said it averages. To get the spacing right, I had to use a piece of scrap drywall (fortunately, we had enough lying around) fastened to a piece of scrap 2x2 to draw a mark on the parts of the wall that weren't blocked by the vent pipe.

To get around the vent pipe, I had to use a piece of half-inch plywood fastened to three brackets that would fit just behind the pipe - but not too far, or I wouldn't be able to drive in the screws. Needless to say, all this took some time.

Sigh.

I really wish I'd taken a picture, but by the time I got the nailing edges installed and the piece of drywall cut to fit (only took three trips up and down the stairs to do it - it wasn't exactly a square piece, even with the plaster trimmed back), I was covered in dust, tired, hot, and somewhat unwilling to take the drywall out of the hole just so I could go and get my camera.

So, no work-in-progress shots I'm afraid, but I do have one of the finished project:



So yeah. That's a weekend's worth of work right there. Oh, and of course, it's time for another edition of

The Injury Report

The plaster on our walls is made of concrete - or something very close to it. At any rate, it's very sharp.

I scraped my right pinkie finger on some protruding plaster inside the wall while I was trimming the sides of the hole. It bled somewhat, but not too badly.

While trying not to touch the injured part of my pinkie to the plaster on the back of the wall, I scraped the cuticle of my right index finger across what proved to be an exceptionally sharp part of the plaster I was attempting to trim. It didn't bleed as much, but hurt much, much more.

Anyway, I hope to get one more post in before our travel-imposed hiatus next weekend. But if not, well... see you in April.


Read more...

The end is nigh... of drywall, that is.

Yes, it's true. We can honestly say that we're almost finished the drywall. Almost.

Of course, that's after a full two days of hard slogging away at it. So, in a way, you could also say we're still not finished. Hmmm... I think I'll stick with being almost done, if it's all the same to you.

At any rate, I apologize in advance for the relative brevity of this post - yet again - but it's been a long day of work, even with losing an hour to that antiquated daylight savings time nonsense, and I'm tired.

So here it is, the completed bathroom drywall:





Yep. It's done. As is the office - well, almost. There's just one piece I haven't put up yet, and that's to cover the bulkhead by the electrical panel.

We also tackled one of the hardest bits, the wall behind the laundry sink and washing machine:



Looks pretty good, eh? You'd hardly notice that we had to make a last-minute run to Crappy Tire to get an extra piece of pipe we could reroute the drain for the sink. Yep. Half-an-inch of drywall screwed up all the angles.

But that's about it. Oh, the War Department cleaned up all the detritus in the yard and got it stacked nicely by the curb for the once-yearly city brush pick-up while I put up the last piece of drywall in the closet and the tricky piece under the support beam by the workshop, but really, that's the sum total of a weekend's worth of work up there.

Sheesh.

I think the next time I take part in a renovation, I'm putting in for the supervisor position. It looks like a freaking cakewalk to me:




Read more...

Long day, short post

It's been a really long day and I'm really tired, so don't expect too much from this post...

Oh, who am I kidding? If you're reading this, you know better than to expect too much from any of my posts. I know, I know: shut up and make with the pictures.

Well, all right, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Our window of opportunity in terms of work was somewhat limited yesterday, owing to the fact that we'd invited some friends over for dinner without really noticing just how messy our house had become over the past few weeks. Between getting the kitchen/living room/dining table/bathroom cleaned up and presentable for our guests and running around all over town for booze and groceries (these aren't the kind of people for which you want to entertain without a skinful or two of good wine in your system), we had precious little time to work on the basement.

Today, however, was much better. We finally managed to tackle a job that I had long been dreading: the shower walls!

Rather than spend $53.00 (seriously!) on a 4-1/2" hole saw to cut the hole for the shower taps, we elected to use a 1" hole saw, followed by a series of 1/2" drill holes, followed by extensive Dremelling. Amazingly enough, it worked perfectly, and we got the hole in exactly the right position, and exactly the right size. Sure, it probably took us about an hour longer than it would have taken a professional to do the same job, but we're getting used to that. Sadly.

At any rate, we bolted the two halves of the shower together and then fitted the whole shebang into place:



Yes, the brown tape-like stuff is coming off, no, that isn't the color scheme for the bathroom.

We also -FINALLY- conquered that awful piece of drywall beside the bathroom door:



How did we manage that, you ask? Simple, I say: the War Department did what we should have done the first time and made a template:



Believe me, I was awfully close to stapling that piece of cardboard into place and then just playing dumb when Tony showed up to start the mudding.

"Cardboard? No way, man. That's top-quality drywall. Well, that's what they told us at Home Depot, anyway..."

Read more...

Another weekend, another three pieces of drywall

Good lord, drywall takes forever.

Okay, I'll rephrase:

Good lord, drywall takes us forever.

To be fair, we didn't spend that much time working on the drywall this weekend, what with helping our (future) house-sitter move, picking out bathroom fixtures, making yet another run to Home Despot/Rona, getting groceries, cleaning the house, and spending a couple glorious hours picking through the endless stacks of books at the annual Times Colonist Book Sale.

Even so, it really is taking us an awfully long time to put up the damn wallboard.

On Thursday night, with the War Department out at the opera, I managed to finish off a few of the minor outstanding chores such as putting in the seam joints in the ceiling.

I also filled the gap over the bathroom door with a piece of half-inch plywood:



And trimmed back the edges of the drywall at the outside corners so it wasn't quite flush:



I'm still not sure why our drywall guy wants it like that, but in terms of drywall prep, he's the boss.

I also put up a couple of spacers to keep the stack of drywall far enough away from the wall so that, on Saturday, we could install the drywall on the back of the bathroom wall:



That one corner pretty much sums up everything I hate about drywall. Let me share the pain...

The first piece we put up was the bottom one on the long side back wall of the bathroom). We must have been drinking the good kool-aid at the same time, because that piece went in perfectly, first try. It even had a small cutout for the electrical outlet in the lower left corner, and we got the hole perfectly centered, and not over-sized at all.

And... that's when things started to go downhill in a hurry. We measured and cut the piece to go immediately above that, but for some reason I measured the depth of the cutout (to go around the support beam) a full inch too big. Which meant we had to trim it back to the stud and create another seam for Tony to deal with. (Visible on the right side of the picture above.) My bad, I suppose, but it was damn frustrating.

So we were extra careful with the next piece, to span across the chimney between the back wall of the bathroom and the opening for the door into the workshop. We measured the top and measured the bottom, which were the same, and the right and left, which were the same. "Oh, good," we thought. "Finally, a square piece of drywall." So we carefully measured and cut a fresh piece and maneuvered it into the corner and wiggled it into position.

The piece overlapped the doorway by a good three-quarters of an inch. But this time my measuring/cutting wasn't to blame. Oh, no. It was the fact that the back wall of the bathroom bowed out in the middle, meaning the drywall was tight to the right side in the center of the wall, but left a three-quarter inch gap at the top and bottom. (Also visible in the picture above.)

That's about when we called it a day and went out to the pub for some beers.

Stupid drywall.

Pretty much the only thing this weekend that went to plan was picking up the bathroom fixtures. Not only were they a little less expensive than we were expecting, but the store even had them in stock.

Here's a sneak preview:



Ha ha ha. If I have to suffer, so do you.

Oh, one last thing before I head off to bed and dream of things that (hopefully) aren't drywall-related. If you decide to head down to the Times Colonist Book Sale and browse through the extensive selection of used books, please keep in mind that you will be in close contact with several thousand other book-lovers.

For god's sake, SHOWER FIRST!!! That means YOU, lady with the stank-ass wool sweater and the hippie beads - especially you.
Read more...

Drywall. It's no laughing matter.

Good lord, I'm hating the whole drywall experience.

I know I say that about a lot of things, but there was seriously one point today where I had to install some extra nailing edges and it was a relief to just be fiddling with insulation for a little while.

Drywall sucks. Big time.

Still, it wasn't all doom and gloom and copious amounts of swearing. We did manage to accomplish SOME things. Like the time we had a professional tell us our drywall was terrible. Ha ha, we laughed loud and long that day, I tell you! No, really, we did. Partly because we needed to laugh to keep from crying, but mostly because the guy who told us our drywall sucks was the guy we're going to pay to do the mudding and sanding and sanding and sanding for us.

One of the things (among the thousands) about drywall that really bugs us is the amount of waste involved. To keep the number of seams to a reasonable level, you sort of need to use the biggest pieces you can, wherever you can. This leads to piles and piles and piles of cast-off bits of drywall:



Now, the bits DO get recycled (though you have to pay the city to do it, which means that, yes, we are paying for this drywall TWICE), but you have to store all these bits somewhere while you're still working on creating more waste. Which, in turn, leads to a lot of bumped elbows, munged corners, and - of course - swearing.

But we soldier on, and we've managed to finish the entire office area, with the exception of one small piece by the electrical panel, and the back of the left-hand side of the closet opening -- the part you can't see in this picture:



As I might have mentioned, we've hired somebody to do the finishing work on the drywall for us. He was also the one who told us our drywall sucked - though to be honest, not really in so many words. What he said was actually, "I've seen contractors do a worse job than this" and "You did all this framing yourselves? It's well done - very nice." At least, that's what we think he said; his accent's pretty thick.

Okay, so he didn't REALLY say the drywall sucked, and he did compliment me on my framing (yay!), but he also pointed out one problem that we'll have to address: Where the seams in the ceiling cross the floor joists, the drywall isn't very strong, and will crack from the vibrations of people walking on the floor overhead. This is bad - it would mean we'd be forever patching and repainting. We really don't want to do that.

Fortunately, Tony the drywall guy had a solution: insert pieces of plywood into the ceiling at each of the problem seams, and use them to keep the seams tight together. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, yeah, except for the fact that we've already attached the drywall to the ceiling. Oh, no problem, Tony says. Just take out a couple of screws so the drywall will sag down a bit, slide in the piece of plywood (with a screw in it), grab the screw and use it to hold the plywood in place while you screw in a few extra drywall screws. Simple as pie!

Yeah. Not so much.

For starters, I had to take out a lot more than a couple of screws to get the drywall to sag to the point where I could separate the pieces far enough to get a piece of 5/8s plywood into the gap, and even then, I couldn't figure out how to get the piece all the way into the ceiling when it had a great big bloody screw jutting out of the middle of it.

Fortunately, my momma didn't raise no stupid children (well, except for my sister... and that dozy brother of mine) and I eventually figured out a solution (yes, with the War Department's help). I drilled a hole through the middle of the plywood, stuck through a piece of stiff wire, and twisted the end into a semblance of a knot. With the wire fastened to the plywood, I could bend it out of the way, slide the plywood into the gap, and then use the wire to pull the plywood back so it was centered over the seam, overlapping each side equally. I could then haul on the wire to keep the plywood in place while I sank in a couple of screws.

Here's what the ceiling looked like when I finished the first row of seam reinforcements:



Kinda reminds me of the Little Shop of Horrors...

Just for good measure, I took a picture of one of the new seams, too:



I just have to snip off the wire and then I can push it up into the ceiling and leave it.

So, that's about the extent of it. We did get started on the bathroom drywall this afternoon, but for some reason the very first piece we cut was completely fubar. Wasn't even close.

Needless to say, that was somewhat disheartening, so we just worked on some other, more minor things for the rest of the day. We'll get back to it tomorrow, though.

So, yeah. Long story short: drywalling sucks. The end.


Read more...

There's nothing funny about drywall

I tried to come up with an entertaining title for this post, I really did. The problem is that, when you get right down to it, there's just nothing entertaining or remotely funny about drywall. It sucks that much. It's like a black hole of humor. Say anything funny or try to crack a joke around drywall, and the gypsum will suck it right out of the air, while the person you were talking to just stands there with a quizzical look on their white-dusted face.

Try it. I dare ya.

Anyway, we've been spending our evenings and weekends putting up drywall for a little more than a week now, and there's really only one thing that keeps me going: the knowledge that we've decided to hire someone else to do the mudding. I don't care what it costs - I ain't doing it myself. He's coming over on Tuesday night to give us an estimate, but I assure you, it's just a formality. If he's willing to do it, he can name his price.

With drywall being the sucking black hole of non-comedy that it is, I don't really have anything funny to say, so I'll just put up some pictures and go back to what I was doing (watching the Canucks do their impersonation of drywall - yuk yuk yuk).

Here's the soon-to-be-built-in bookcase:



And here it is from the other side:



Oh, and before you start posting snarky comments about how big some of the gaps are, the drywall guy even SAID we could get away with a fair bit of "amateur" effort if we had a professional mudder, so nyaah.

Oh, and I managed to get the hole cut into the cold air return for the office before calling it a day:



So, sorry about the lack of my trademark "wit", but like I said, drywall just isn't very entertaining.

Oh, right! I mentioned something last time about the hammer drill issue. I should probably explain.

See, ever since we started this little project, we've been using Steve's hammer drill because we don't have one of our own. Now, Steve's hammer drill is a perfectly serviceable hammer drill - for your average homeowner. Sadly, it wasn't exactly designed for the shit and abuse that I was putting it through, and it kinda stopped working so hot. The motor still works and everything, but the chuck kinda doesn't really grip the bits very well, and the teeth and key are worn down so much that it's impossible to tighten.

So... well, we bought Steve a new hammer drill. One that's just as good as the one we wrecked. But we couldn't exactly go and buy Steve a new hammer drill and then turn around and use it before he even got a chance to lay eyes on it. Not to mention that I'd probably destroy it anyway, and then we'd have to buy him ANOTHER one.

So while we were buying Steve a new hammer drill, well, we kinda bought ourselves a little present. Something a little more heavy-duty... just to help with all the TapCons we have left to do, you know?



Ain't she pretty?
Read more...

Fun with math, part two

As I've probably mentioned before, I'm really not that great at math, especially when it involves fractions (or decimals, or addition, or division -- anything with numbers, really). Sadly, putting up drywall requires a great deal of math, particularly when each piece of gypsum needs to be cut to fit an uneven wall with holes for electrical outlets and whatnot.

That being said, we have learned a few things that make the math a little less onerous. A little.

One of the things that helps, and generally helps avoid having to recut TOO many pieces, is to base all of the measurements for a piece of drywall on one corner (or at least a specific side) of the wall on which it's going to hang. The amount of drywall we're already wasting is bad enough as it is; we really don't want to create any more than we have to:



So on Wednesday night, we had already put up a couple of pieces and cut out the big window, and figured we could do one more before calling it a night. The next piece in the queue, however, was something of a tricky one, being as it wasn't QUITE a full four feet wide, required a hole for an electrical outlet (of course), and had a big cutout in the top to leave room for the electrical panel.

Forging on, the War Department got in there with a tape measure and started singing out the measurements while I grabbed a marker and faithfully recorded everything on the nearest available surface - which happened to be a piece of rigid foam insulation:



I think you can tell from looking at it what we were up against. I had some concerns, but we grabbed a fresh piece of drywall and started scoring, cutting, snapping, and sawing away. Once in a while, as we shaped the piece to fit, I would surreptitiously grab a tape measure and check the measurements.

I didn't think it looked too good for our heroes.

But we pressed on, and got the length cut, then the width, then the little cutout, and finally formed the hole for the electrical outlet. By this time, however, I was so convinced that the piece was totally out of whack that I didn't even bother to score the lines for the outlet hole, but just hacked it out quick and dirty with the drywall saw. Finally, there was nothing left to do but drag the piece over to the corner and hoist it up into place.

Call me a monkey's jesus, but the damn thing fit like a glove. First time, no trimming:



So, yeah. Maybe we're getting better, or maybe my math sucks so much that I can't even correctly measure a piece that's actually going to fit just right.

Anyway, we took last night off from drywalling to address the hammer drill issue, but I think it's all coming along okay:



And yes, we had a hammer drill issue. More on that next time.

Read more...

Some interesting, little-known facts about drywall

Now that we are fully engaged* in the task of covering up all that hard work I did on the framing, we're starting to find out some interesting things that we really didn't know about drywall.

That's not to say that they're things we necessarily wanted to know about drywall, but things that we've just come to know through the course of the monotonous, soul-crushing drudgery that is drywalling.

It's almost enough to make one wish there was still some digging to do instead...

Okay, I exaggerate - somewhat. I'd still rather be drywalling than digging, but only because there are markedly fewer wasps when working inside. And more supervisor kitties that look really funny when they've been sniffing around in the drywall dust. Hee.

So, the first thing we learned about drywall is that it's really damn hard to get into the house. Drywall sheets are usually (always?) sold in pairs, which is fine for loading them into the truck, but not so good for maneuvering them in through the side door, part-way up the stairs into the kitchen, and then down the stairs, over the dryer, and into the basement. It's a veritable obstacle course of tricky corners and annoying edges of sharp things - or sharp edges of annoying things, as the case may be. Getting ten sheets of drywall from the store is a major undertaking, and we learned that the hard way when we bought 16 at one time to do the ceiling.

Another interesting thing we learned about drywall is that the stuff they sell at Home Depot sucks. I think the name brand is Sheetrock, and they call it that because naming it Shitrock would be a dead giveaway. I don't know what exactly they do differently, but the paper tears more easily, the gypsum itself seems crumbly and mushy, and it never seems to snap in a clean line. The stuff from Rona, on the other hand, feels more rigid (making it easier to carry)and has much sturdier paper for the same price. The moral of the story is to buy ProRoc drywall from Rona: it has the official Don and Amy's Basement Reno Seal of Approval^TM.

And finally, before we get to the pictures, we learned one other important thing about drywall: it's a lot damn harder to put up than it looks on TV. You'd think it's just a matter of propping the board up against the wall and chucking in a few screws, but lemme tell ya, Jack, that ain't it. That ain't it at all.

Okay, sure, maybe it IS that easy if you're working in a room with square walls, an even floor, and a number of windows, plugs, and light fixtures that doesn't exceed the gross domestic product figure of several small European countries. In our basement, however, every single piece needs to be trimmed, cut, scored, blasphemed, measured, tossed out, sworn at, scored, cut, holed, fitted, trimmed, re-holed, tested, cursed at, and then finally screwed in place (accompanied, of course, by the requisite swearing).

Here's how it looked on Sunday night, after two days of work:



Yes, two days. It takes FOREVER... Oh, and not included in that picture was the bathroom ceiling, which we managed to finish with the much appreciated help of Clamb (who needs to work on his swearing a little if he's going to fit in on our job site).

I took these two last night, after another four hours of effort over two evenings:





Did I mention it takes FOREVER?

And yes, there ARE two colors of drywall. The stuff from Home Depot even LOOKS greyer and uglier and just plain crappy.

Oh, and just because it's been a while, it's another edition of everyone's favorite feature

The Injury Report

Strictly speaking, this particular injury didn't happen while working in the basement, but was probably a direct result of being really tired after a full day of drywalling.

I have five splotches on the back of my left hand: two rather large, and three smaller ones. They look kind of like liver spots, but they're quite red, rather than the usual brown.

The source of said spots? Well, let's just say that when you're searing a nice piece of halibut in a pan of hot oil and butter, make sure that when you go to turn it over, you're flipping it AWAY from you.

That's some free advice from me to you, right there. And yes, you get what you pay for.






.
* Ha ha. It's a pun. Get it?
Read more...