good times . . . . .

We've been putting in some really long days lately. We have an occupancy permit deadline coming up that we are trying to meet. Don't ask me why Doug is suddenly interested in taking a deadline seriously, but for some reason he is. Maybe he noticed that I was finally getting kind of comfortable with the lack of progress. We certainly can't have that.

Anyway, all of a sudden we have people helping us, which is great, but the coordination of schedules between our drywall putter-uppers and our drywall finishers got a little out of whack and as a result we've been putting in some really long and exhausting days putting up some of the drywall ourselves. I knew this would happen, dammit!!! We basically get up, do drywall, sleep about 6 hours, get up, do drywall, sleep about 6 hours, etc. etc. etc. I've noticed that our pace is about 15 times slower than the two guys who did most of the rest of the house. That makes me feel especially glad that I had this wonderful opportunity to participate in the drywall installation. It just makes the whole process that much more special. Right? Doesn't it make you feel jealous? It has been such a meaningful experience.

Yesterday we finally finished the three rooms that were left to do and today there were some final touches that needed to be taken care of here and there. I had a brunch gig and Doug probably slept in so we worked late, as usual. It's midnight now. We were too tired to continue, so tomorrow we'll get up, probably at 4AM to finish the cleanup so that the drywall finishers won't have to deal with our tools and other junk lying around all over the place.

For the second floor Doug ordered 125 sheets of 12 foot x 4 foot drywall. I don't know how this happened, but I for once did not check his math, partly because he didn't ask. I certainly regret that now because there are 27 (that's TWENTY SEVEN) sheets of absurdly heavy drywall left over up on the second floor. Guess who Doug thought might help him carry these down the stairs, out the back door and down the driveway around to the basement today? What? You have no idea? Well I helped him carry one of them all that distance and then six more from the first floor to the basement since he also bought way too much for the first floor as well. That was all I could do. I will have to use my brain (somebody needs to) to figure out a more intelligent (and probably expensive) way to get all of that drywall moved downstairs. I've done enough (hopefully not permanent) damage to myself on behalf of Doug's Foam Core Fantasy. It's neither smart, nor worth it, to completely destroy yourself just for a house.

Speaking of permanent damage, Doug chopped off about an eighth inch of his index finger with a circular saw the other day. So now our subfloor has blood all over it. He wouldn't go to the doctor. He thinks it will grow back. I guess fingers don't matter as much to trombone players.

purple polka-dotted kitchen

Here's the before, from ten days ago:

Here's the after, from yesterday! Almost finished.

What do you think, should we keep this look?

This is looking from the living room to the front door:

Yesterday we worked from 7:00 AM until 2:00 AM. Today will be much shorter. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

It's like an igloo, only warmer

Our house looks like an igloo inside. I'm glad it doesn't feel like one - it's becoming more and more weather tight as Doug completes his last minute foaming around the windows. The inside of our house is so white now - it looks completely different. The drywall dust on the floor looks like snow.

It's a whole lot more house-like now that all of the bare OSB (that's Oriented Strand Board for you amateurs) has been covered over by the beautiful beautiful drywall. Dougs thinks all of it will be up in another day or two. The finishers are due to start next week, and we have a tile guy coming over tomorrow to give us an estimate. If we can't afford him we'll do it ourselves, I bet. So things are moving right along now, finally.

The mold and moisture resistant XP drywall matches our front door.

These are the final days of the Blue Room.

I'm going to kind of miss that blue painted OSB!

It's a purple kitchen! So pretty! So temporary!

Drywall, Day Two

Buc brought a couple of his guys over yesterday to help with the drywall and there was a flurry of activity instead of the usual plodding along. I'm not used to having so many people in my house so I'm really glad I had a bunch of other things I needed to do instead.

I think they are doing a great job of measuring carefully and working quickly. They got a lot done in one day. The upstairs is kind of a big job because we have ten foot ceilings up there. Our bedroom looks so civilized now! The greyish white wallboard is so much prettier than that ugly brown OSB.

One of Doug's frantic last minute activities that I was helping him with before the drywall guys came was shooting some more foam up into the intersections of the roof panels. Why he couldn't have done this two years ago while we were twiddling our thumbs waiting for the contractor to show up ..... oh never mind. He seemed to be proud of the fact that he thought of this great idea to cover the seams with aluminum tape to prevent the foam from oozing back out, since the surface needs to be smooth for the drywall, so I'm putting a photo of that up here for you all to admire. He really misses working with metal, I guess.

One of the things I most admired about the drywall guys was that they were thoughtful enough to lay a sheet of paper under their truck so oil wouldn't get all over our driveway. I'm easily impressed that way.

Today we put in another window on the south side. We have two remaining windows to replace. We left the old ones in all this time so that the drywall could get delivered through them (see below). Hopefully Doug will complete all of the miscellaneous odds and ends by the time everyone comes back next week. I wish (now she's totally lying!) I didn't have so many playing engagements this weekend or I'd be over there helping him. I'll be there tomorrow after my brunch gig until Doug finally conks out - sorry, that's the best I can do.

Drywall, Day One

Since we are almost finished with the outside trim, what better time would there be to drop that and move on to something else? So drywall it is!

The morning started out rather tediously with a bunch of tiny little things that had been left to the last minute (what better time?) which we had to quickly finish before Buc came over to get us started with the drywall.

Buc got here at about 1:00 and I quickly realized that this was "man's work" because all of a sudden there was nothing for me to do. Which was fine because I was getting kind of bored and I was still very sore from all of yesterday's window activity. It was very interesting to observe how the work dynamic changed after Buc arrived. Doug no longer needed me to be his personal manservant because he was so busy learning all about drywall installation from Buc. He actually seemed a little nervous about it, which is sort of unusual for him. Anyway, this drywall lift apparatus that Buc is letting us use is pretty impressive. It holds the drywall right against the ceiling so that it can easily be screwed into place. And to raise it up you just turn the crank. There are wheels on the bottom of it so it can be moved around easily.

They got the first 12x4 piece up and then I went to Home Depot to pick up some Zip Tool drywall bits for cutting out the holes for the lights and the vents and I also got some dust masks. When I got back they were preparing to put the second sheet up.

There was still nothing for me to do so I went out to get them some lunch. By the time I came back the second sheet of drywall was in place, ready to be screwed onto the studs. Hmmm, that sounds funny....
By then it was time for me to leave for my gig. When I stopped by the house tonight afterwards I saw that they had finished about 1/3 of the upstairs ceiling. Doug was completely exhausted but still working on some additional things that he had saved for the last minute. We will be back over there early tomorrow morning attending to more of these last minute details before Buc and his two friends show up. That's right, apparently it was decided today that more helpers are needed. That's good because I'm busy all day tomorrow except in the morning.

Even though it's just a small area upstairs, the wallboard that was put up today has completely transformed the rooms where it's been installed. All of a sudden the ceilings look really high! It's amazing and I am looking forward to seeing what happens tomorrow. Maybe they'll get some walls done too. I guess it is time to really start thinking about paint colors, countertops and tile - all of the good stuff!

Ready or Not, Here Comes the Wallboard

We got our wallboard delivered today at 6:30 AM. Wanna see how we got it delivered in through the upstairs window? Check out these two videos! Be sure to turn your sound down though - that's one noisy truck!

Not surprisingly, this delivery and the wallboard installation has occurred before the outside is completely finished. I guess we'll have better weather for that in January. That makes perfect sense, right? Well it appears to make sense to one of us at least.

There were three guys on the wallboard delivery crew. One of them operated the boom that brought the stacks of wallboard up to the windows, and the other two super strong guys pulled the stacks into the house and moved them to various locations inside.

I'm really glad it wasn't Doug and me doing all that heavy lifting. That will come later today. We kept our old windows in place on the south side of the house so that the new ones wouldn't get messed up from the wallboard delivery. Now we need to get the 4 remaining new windows put in quickly so that it doesn't hold up the wallboard installation. It's been over a year since we finished installing all of the other windows so I hope we aren't too rusty at it. Actually we were pretty good at it back then, so hopefully it will be a quick and easy process today.... RIGHT!

Time to get back to work!