Mud on the Ceiling

Wondering what we've been up to? You can see that the ceiling is "getting there." I have to say Troy does not seem too excited about it and will do anything but while the weather is still ok. He figures mudding with snow flying will be just fine.

Adding insulation around the slab, however, would not be any fun in the snow.
This has to get done before we do siding and Troy is pretty motivated to get that done this fall.
This is the first layer. Troy did three on the east wall so I assume he'll be doing the same here. Six inches of foam insulation. The rather frequent rain has been slowing progress here.

One other task he did the other day was to affix the power box to the wall. Until then, it had been rather comically bouncing around on the conduit, somewhat like a weeble wooble toy.

But not anymore!

Drywall and Other Fun

It's been a busy weekend, but most of the work you're seeing here was done last week.

I wish I could convey the feeling of looking at 70 feet of drywall all taped and mudded (1 coat). It looks so different than raw drywall.

Isaac has been doing a credible job and has the first coat done on the west wall and most of the north wall. By golly, this might get done yet!

Because of company and requisite entertainments, we decided not to do insulation again this week. Being so close to done with it, I have to admit to being a little frustrated with not having the time to work on it. (Did I just say that?)

Troy, however, very happily kept himself entertained with dressing up his trailer as he had mentioned he was going to do.

You may recall that the last holiday we had (Memorial Day) we enjoyed Insul-a-palooza. But July 4 was quite different. While the company and Isaac went to the zoo, I painted and mowed, and Troy spent the whole day working on his trailer. I mean the whole day. A few breaks for food.

Sunday after our picnic, he did the same. It is getting real close to looking like a box again.

A bonus for me of all this welding is that Troy hooked up an outlet for the welder out in the shop. The two thumbs up on that are:

1. it gets the welder out of my kitchen and frees up 1 more square foot of floor space, and
2. the welder will no longer hog my dryer outlet when I wish to do laundry.

Just in case you wanted to know what's in it for me.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

We have reached the milestone of finishing the drywall in the shop! (Trumpet flourish, please.)

We put up the drywall in the last corner on Friday night:

We are now free to go really crazy with insulation and put it everywhere. It also helps to make the shop look that much more "finished" (from the inside).

West end of shop

Sadly, the first thing Troy will have to do to that nice drywall is drill holes for the insulation. He tells me that's just how it goes.

And in case you want a review, here is the east end of the shop:

We were going to go crazy with insulation again tomorrow, but Troy came home from work very sick this evening so those plans are uncertain right now.

Drywall spurt.

Another of my church homies (the other David) came by this morning to help out with drywall. Our small group likes to help one another out as we are able. This small group has been the best incarnation of true community that I have ever experienced. If you have never participated in a small group with dedicated Christians, you're missing out. You owe it to yourself to try it some time. Plus, hanging drywall with your church friends may have some spiritual benefits, not unlike self flagellation or wearing a hair shirt.

Normally, I'll get 3-5 sheets of drywall done after work. Today, with David's help, we must have put up more almost 20 sheets. Rock on! Doing a little mental math, we must have about 15 or 20 sheets to go. Motivation tends to get very good toward the end.

Once we get the drywall done, I will do some basic taping/mudding and then we will blow vast quantities of cellulose (recycled newsprint) into those big fat, one foot thick, walls. Then a little wiring, a little plumbing, a set of kitchen cabinets, some siding and boom, we're done.

It all sounds so simple like that.

troy

Slogging on.

In many respects, the greatest predictor of success in many ventures, is how determined the participants are. Of course there is the famous quote from Churchill, Never give up. Never, never, never...NEVER give up. I'm paraphrasing a little bit. I often concatenate that speech in my mind with Nikita Kruschev standing up at the podium at the United Nations pounding away with his shoe on the podium while railing against this and that.

In contrast to these world changing, larger than life legends, this post has to do with progress on my drywall. My shop needs, in round figures, 4,000 square feet of drywall installed. That's 125 sheets if everything went in as whole sheets, which it doesn't. Each sheet weighs approximately 70 pounds. So, just a wee bit shy of four and a half tons of drywall. It also takes about 5,000 drywall screws. We now have about 35 sheets of drywall to go. Woo hooo, only a ton and quarter to go. And of course, I am at my most efficient now. I have the procedure totally worked out, I don't have to think about how to do the next sheet.

There were days at the beginning of the drywall phase where I had doubts about getting it done in this lifetime. But unless Jesus comes back in the next couple of weeks (which we should be continually praying for by the way...), it will be accomplished. I got 3 sheets done thursday night, and five sheets done last night when I inadvertently took a little nap and missed my small group meeting. As penance I installed holy drywall, five sheets of it.

In two weeks, it should all be up, DV. That's a latin abbreviation for Lord Willing.

Finest regards,

troy

Progress Continues

Check this out, the shop is starting to look like a real room:

These shots are looking east (northeast above, southeast below).
Check out all the drywall! Troy has been able to actually get some of the ceiling done now that the lift is working. He got 5 (five!) sheets up last night after work, and some more this afternoon while he was waiting for me to come out.
I was out there to help hang another course of plastic. Troy was running out of room for drywall and he wanted to get the opening in the north wall covered so he could install the window. The last course only covered it half way so we had to do another. If he can get the window installed on Tuesday as planned, the shop will be completely secured. Another milestone!

Lest you think we are almost done, here is a view of the west end:
I had a happy thought when I realized that three more courses of plastic will get us to the west wall. Yeah! I can handle three more. Doing three of almost anything is definitely running down the homestretch. 3, 2, 1, done! Then I had a sad thought when I realized that didn't include the west wall itself. But then Optimistic Me retorted that the west wall will be easy because the ceiling will be done (no overhead work) and there are no obstructions on the wall at all. I was back to "Woo hoo! We can do it!"

Another thing I did today was paint a few more markers at the studs. I try to keep ahead of the plastic. The yellow can crapped out, so I went for a new colour. No more yellow to match (first choice), so I used white (second choice). Troy was dubious and justifiably so. It didn't show up very well, and with just a little wear and tear would not show up at all. So next up was a very look-at-me red. (Third's the charm.) It looks so good it makes the painting fun. I may have to redo all the yellow ones. Because, you know, they might not show up after a little wear either. :wink: That and, as everyone knows, everything looks better in red.

All for tonight. Think good work-hard thoughts for us,

christina

More Drywalling...with Excitement

Working in the shop has greatly improved since the temperatures have come up to about freezing. When I joined Troy today, the torpedo heater was going and things were positively toasty. Well, ok, my fingers were a little "heat challenged" but that improved as I started moving around a little more. (I guess that's a euphemism for working harder.)

Just in case any of you doubters remain, Troy insisted on capturing proof today that I do drywall.

Not that you can really tell that it's me. (Unless you're a really good study of my butt, and if you are, I don't really want to know about it, and you probably shouldn't admit to it.) You can admire my new workboots and toolbelt. (Not purple, but this one actually works.)

After putting in a few full sheets of drywall, I started to do some of the fiddly pieces we had to cut around the interior walls. One nice thing about this is that the pieces are generally sized so I can handle them on my own. And another is that I can learn some drywall skills out in the shop before I'm forced to "showcase" them in the house. Because right now, I'm slow...but sloppy. (To paraphrase a friend.)

While I was cutting those pieces Troy thought he would keep himself productive by continuing with the ceiling pieces. A one-man job with the drywall lift. For some background let me share that this is the same drywall lift that has attempted to kill Troy a couple times. And those of you with any sense of foreshadowing can now guess that it tried it again. First piece of drywall is headed up to the ceiling, Troy gets it right up at 12 feet, and SMASH, it hurtles down at Troy, but missed because he has learned to duck. There was some unladylike language but that's ok because Troy is not a lady.

This prompts Troy to "fix it good." So he spends the rest of the day going to buy parts, disassembling the lift, and trying to reassemble it with heavier-duty cables. It's not finished yet, but Troy is hopeful that it is in the last stages. This left me working alone in the shop. Yes, I have been promoted to unsupervised drywall work. Woo hoo...wonder if I'll get a raise? (More responsibility and all...)

We now have the walls half done, and the ceiling is still about a quarter done. But before we do any more, we'll have to hang some more plastic. Blah...

Good night from

-Slow...but sloppy.

Back to Work

We have recommitted ourselves to the projects at hand and to working longer, harder, and just plain more...until we can't stand it again, anyway. We've had a little lull lately and that's ok, for a while, but then it's time to get back at it.

So this Sunday--Superbowl or no Superbowl--we bought 25 more sheets of drywall (about what the truck can handle) and went to put them up. But wait, drywall requires moisture barrier, tedious though it may be. So we worked at getting a 100' long, 8'4" wide piece arranged and hung around two interior walls that butted up against the outside wall. And when we were done, it was swEEt! (That's my "Peyton 'sweet'"--you know like in the commercial where he goes to San Diego and he says the weather is swEEt! I love it.)

We got it stapled all down the wall, and mostly across the ceiling. We had two staplers going (Troy's new cordless from Ryobi and another electric from Harbor Freight Menards--for as long as that one lasts anyway) and we were smoking...and then we faced another interior wall on the other side, the late hour, the cold, and our hunger and we were done for the night. (And guess what? in time to still watch most of the Superbowl--lucky me!)

Here's a rare shot of Troy in his "domain." Doesn't he look like he could play in the Superbowl in that get up? Looking very buff (and puffed!)...

Let me just share with you that he's not quite so manly when he's sitting on the scaffolding telling me to push him around like he's some Egyptian Pharaoh...

That's all from the Gardens,

christina

Drywall, Anyone?

So we were busy today. Troy did a bunch of prep work to maximize my helping time. (I had allotted him 2 hours today!) By 5:00, I was out helping to put up some drywall. The goal was to get the pile off the floor onto the walls so that we could move the tractor further in and then start parking some other stuff in there. And this time, whatever didn’t make it up on the walls would get moved out of the way no matter what.

We had started the south wall the other day, and tonight got that finished up to the powder room (about half done). That was 6 sheets of drywall.

Then we had to move all of this crap—

—from the north wall to the south wall so that we could start on the north wall. (Things are so efficient sometimes…) The lower sheets went on pretty easy

but then we ran into this:

Do you see how the stud and the edge of the drywall don’t really run along the same line? We double checked the measurements (each sure the end we measured was right), and all the numbers were "right." So maybe the stud was crooked. In any case, we took the piece back down (it was only tacked up), cut it to match the stud and went from there. We got a couple more pieces up and then called it a night. Sorry I didn’t get pics, but when we decided to quit, I made a beeline for the woodstove. (The torpedo heater helped, but was no match for the cold temperatures that have descended on us again.) Before I ran in, however, we did move the remaining three sheets to make way for the tractor, so that is done.

Working with spot lights can be difficult, what with the dark shadows that seem to always be in your way. But sometimes they yield a site you’d never get otherwise: I was surprised by this great shot of Troy’s new drywall gun:

It looks more than a little threatening in the shadows!

The other thing I started on was marking all the studs with little yellow triangles on the floor. (Cause once they're covered by drywall they're gone for good!) I was doing this “between” other jobs or when waiting for Troy, so only got about half of them marked.

All for tonight!

-christina