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:




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Framing update

I know I've been saying this for a while now, but I think I might be telling the truth this time...

I should finish the framing this weekend.

Yep. All of it. Bulkheads, doorways, strange little closets - the whole shebang.

What's more, we have our electrician coming by this morning to scope out the project and work up an estimate for us. I'm hoping he won't look at the framing I've already done and tell us it's all wrong. (Still, better it coming from him than the inspector...) Speaking of which, I've been pretty busy this week and, once more, I have the pictures to prove it. Some of them were even taken with my new camera!

Looking back over the past few posts, I must admit that I've been somewhat remiss in keeping you all up-to-date on the framing progress. The last time I posted pictures of the framing, I hadn't even started to frame in the closet, save for its back wall. As you can see from the following series, I've come quite a ways since then.

First up, here's an establishing shot of the whole closet area:



The areas of interest are really the whole left side where the closet is going to go, and the duct on the top right, where we'll be building a bulkhead to hold all those wires. Jutting out from the wall is the outline of where the right-hand wall of the closet will be. Here's another look at that:



Heh, up close it kinda looks like an optical illusion or an Escher print. Or maybe I'm looking too hard. The reason it's so wide is that we want to run a duct line down from the top so we can put in a register at the bottom of the pillar.

Anyway, here's what I did on Thursday while the War Department was at the ballet:



I think even Amy had to admit that was a good night's work! Here's another shot of the inside of the closet so you can admire the tricky bits of the framing (all of it, really):



I also found time to wrap the duct in some insulating wrap so we could run the wires through the same space without any fear of them melting or overheating:



I taped up the joints with foil tape last night (wasn't THAT a fun little task - not!), and did some more bracing and some of the little finicky stuff that needs to be done before I can start on the bulkhead in front of the duct. None of that makes very good pictures, though.

And of course, speaking of pictures, here's one of the supervisor kitty in his natural habitat:



(Every five minutes for the past three days, Amy's been telling me to stop taking so many pictures of the cats. But she won't let me take any pictures of her, so this is what I'm reduced to. Besides, look at that picture! My old camera could never have taken that shot, not in a million years.

Fine, I'll stop with the pictures of my cat. Sheesh.)

Anyway, I have to go wake Amy up so that she's not showing the electrician around in her pajamas. Good times.

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The framing continues...

Well, despite having to tend to a flu-stricken War Department, I did manage to get some more framing done last night. It's not that impressive (though it was a little tricky in some places):



(And yes, the supervisor kitty says it passed his rigorous inspection.)

Almost done that wall, actually. I wanted to put a couple more studs in before I called it a night, but the sawing and hammering (directly underneath our bedroom) was giving Amy a migraine. Oh, and while we're on the subject of making a lot of noise, can I just say that I'm really starting to hate tapcons? Out of the three tapcons I had to put in last night, I broke two off inside the concrete, had to drill two extra holes, and destroyed yet another drill bit, necessitating yet another a trip to Home Despot five minutes before closing. Stupid things - I'm really not looking forward to putting down the subfloor with them.

But it wouldn't be right to post just one picture and leave all my loyal fans (ha!) hanging, so I figured now might be a good time to take you on a little photo tour of the workspace.

First up, a couple of pictures showing what happens when you buy two-by-fours in eight foot lengths for a basement with a seven foot ceiling. I try to keep the remnants into two piles. The first pile contains any pieces long enough to still be of use for braces:



The second pile I just call kindling:



So, remember when you were a teenager, and your room was really messy, and you told your mom not to clean it because you still knew where everything was and you didn't want her messing up your system?

Yeah? Wasn't that, like, the biggest frikking lie ever?



That's the workbench. Yes, it always looks like that. No, I don't really know where everything is. I just stick my hands into the pile and hope I find whatever it is I'm looking for before the pointy bits start to really hurt.

Next up is the sole source of entertainment available in the basement, the World's Crappiest Radio:



Don't let the labels or CD-shaped door in the top fool you. Only the radio works, and even that sucks. Well, to be fair, a lot of the suckage is the fault of the crappy radio stations in Victoria, but even if they were better, the radio itself would still be a piece of shit.

And finally, here we have the floor drain in the laundry room:



You may be wondering why the cover for the floor drain is sitting on the floor beside the drain rather than, as its intended purpose and indeed its very name would suggest, covering the floor drain, Well, because we have cats.

The supervisor kitty has decided that the most important thing in the world is whatever is in that drain. Not that there's anything in the drain beside the little valve thingy, but he's convinced that it's mightly important that he be able to inspect that drain at all times.

For example, when I finished up last night, I put the drain cover back in place, and put a laundry basket over the drain. On my way up the stairs, I passed the cat coming down. I hadn't even taken my shoes off before he had the basket out of the way, and was working on the drain. I heard the clatter of the metal cover on the concrete floor before I made it halfway down the stairs again.

Brain the size of a walnut. Remarkable.

Anyway, with a little luck, I might finish the framing this weekend! Wouldn't that be sweet?
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Insert Thanksgiving- & framing-related pun here

I tried to think of a good title, I really did. Somehow, "Happy Framesgiving" and "Frappy Thamesgiving" and "Thanksframing Gifts" and even "Sir Frames-a-lot" just didn't seem to give it the special oomph I know everyone expects from me, so I'll leave it up to you to make your own joke. (Give me a break - I'm tired. And full of turkey. Actually, I'm tired BECAUSE I'm full of turkey. And because I did a lot of framing today. You didn't think I was just trying to combine Thanksgiving and Framing because I felt like a challenge did you?)

That's right, after more than a week of enforced idleness thanks to the Top Brass' visit (not that I couldn't use the break), it was back into the trenches and full speed ahead this morning. While the War Department puttered around outside "winterizing" the barbecue, summer furniture, and assorted lawn care equipment, I belted on my tool belt and set to framing. (Once again, I got the job that makes for better pictures.)

The first thing I did was finish putting up the studs on the other side of the doorway opening that I started a little more than a week ago. You can now kinda see where the door between my office and the laundry room will be:



(Ignore the supervisor kitty - he's not really inspecting anything, he's just hoping I forgot to close the basement window.)

Once that was done, I could start on the hard part - framing around the support post. It's a little hard to explain, so I'll just show a few pictures of the finished product, and try to describe what it is you're looking at here.



That's a picture of the wall just inside the doorway. The big, window-like opening on this side of the wall will be a built-in bookcase - eventually. The studs behind that opening are actually part of the bathroom wall, coming down on the other side of the support beam.

Here's another picture of the same thing, looking back towards the office door:



And the same corner from the other side, with the bathroom door (or the opening where the door will be eventually) visible on the right:



And finally, just because it was a damn tricky bit of framing, and I'm kind of proud of the job I did, here's a close up of the corner detail:



Oh, and if the more observant among you are wondering why the top plate on the office side of the new wall didn't go all the way to the floor joists, it's because we're putting a bulkhead on that side in which to run all the wires:



(God damn it, my camera sucks.)

Of course, the REALLY observant among you are wondering how I managed to do all this work and still cook a turkey. Well, I made the big turkey dinner yesterday, which is why there was no update for your Monday morning. As for my impending turkey-induced lack of consciousness? Two words, my friends: LEFT OVERS.

Oh, and before I go sleep off this turkey coma, it's time for another edition of everyone's favorite feature...

The Injury Report

• I have two small scrapes on the back of my right thumb. Normally, this wouldn't be noteworthy, but... oh, nevermind. I was going to say that they really hurt when I put on the rubber gloves to clean out the cat box, but ... meh. It's not that bad. I just didn't want to be left out.


• Amy has an ingrown toenail, and she had all these freaky red blotches on her foot. She cleaned it out with hydrogen peroxide and put some Polysporin on it, though, and it doesn't look nearly as cool any more.

That's it for me. I'm off to bed, where I intend to groan myself to sleep on my huge, turkey-filled belly.

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