With the workers coming back today, to address the various issues we found… Liz and I couldn’t stay home. So we did what we used to do in the old days – head downtown, to work onsite at our respective offices.
Some unfortunate news. When we got back yesterday and unloaded the car, after being away for a few weeks… we found our floors in a less than ideal state than we had hoped.
Downstairs, we moved the front door against the fireplace. While the floors here have been stained already… we were waiting for a final buff/varnish. With all the work happening on the second floor, we decided it would be efficient of we cleared everything… and allowed the flooring guys to work on both floors at once.
In addition to packing/clearing things, today was all about miscellaneous tasks. On my list: adding insulation in the hallway floor, along with insulating our two closet doors (in the front office).
Expecting a mess today, with a lot of drywall dust in the air from sanding. Woke up early to try to get things covered up as best we can.
Another full day, with more mudding. While I’m mostly familiar with the steps involved with drywall, this stage of things (the mudding and smoothing of things) is a mystery to me. I don’t know how, but they worked a full day, constantly in motion, getting things even and clean.
After a full day, Liz and I were in awe walking around the upstairs. There’s still more to be done, but comparing how fast the two of us work versus a professional was… humbling.
Things got a bit delayed today, with the drywaller needing to delay. Instead of starting today, he showed up to drop off a lot of materials.
We’re getting drywallers in, to attend to all the walls and ceiling. This looked nice once upon a time, before we got electrical put in. This will all likely get torn out, so that the drywallers can start fresh/anew.
It’s difficult to describe. I’m excited to be able to see drywall all around here (and to stop seeing studs and insulation drooping down).
House night tonight – Liz was working on demo-ing the remaining floorboards in the hallway, while I was working on getting up insulation in the office walls.
Bob helped talk me through the piece, and how I should build it. I needed some 9.5″ boards, and the standard 10″ boards from Home Depot wouldn’t quite cut it. So I bought 12″ boards instead, and had to trim them down to size.
It took me a little while to figure out the right sequence, but I eventually got the pieces together.
Mentioning it here because an issue like this might have derailed us for a significant time, a year or so ago. But on encountering it, we evaluated the situation, made a few measurements, did a cut, and proceeded along with the install.
Big day for us today, continuing our work in the hallway with the (very heavy) soundproof drywall. We made good progress a few days ago, and were looking to continuing working with the material today. The big challenge: getting it lifted up another 4′.
The thing of this is: I’d only ever tried installing this with Bob. The drywall is thick (5/8″), comprised of two pieces glued together. And the kicker? The thing is heavy. Like heav-y.
Back when I was helping Bob install this in the master bedroom, I struggled a lot just moving boards around. And had trouble lifting up the boards onto horses.
Saturday was a house day for us, with our focus being on the upstairs hallway. We’ve made some progress during the week, and even got a bit of drywall on the ceiling. But today was a day to continue that work, and to start prepping the walls a bit more.