Drywall is up

After a long weekend of work, and some more late nights, the drywall is hung. I had to pry up the floor to get the door installed (which does NOT bode well for when the carpet is installed, but I'm conveniently ignoring that fact for now).

Now the worst part, the mudding. Seriously, while drywall is the best invention known to man (can you imagine pulling up lathe and plaster?) I think mudding is stupid. Someone needs to make beadboard that is like drywall, so we can avoid the whole mudding thing... dreading it. I checked with Dad, and he said, hire someone. Whatever you do, don't do it yourself... I'm going to listen to him... might be expensive, but my sanity is more expensive...

The inside of a closet takes an amazing amount of drywall to cover, so many twists and turns in there...

We were splitting the bar between Kyles room and the laundry room. In reality, the (eventually to be) laundry room came out ahead in the deal. And yes, before you ask, that piece of drywall is on backwards. And yes, before you ask she did notice and was nice enough not to say anything, and yes it will take WAY more paint to cover properly.. I know I know, should have just cut a new piece, I was tired.

OK so not ALL the drywall is up, sue me... That piece needs me to move the AC vent above the door over about an inch to ensure that it doesn't hit the wall, just didn't have it in me on this particular day.

Jenn decided she would pound away on the floor and finally remove all the cement down there that was holding down the old tiles.

She was so cute, I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was going to be removing all the old floor and she didn't need to do it. Then Tristen, Kyle, and Gavyn got in on the act. Now I have to figure out how to keep the flooring and go over top of it with hardwood or I'll never hear the end of it...

I haven't said it yet this post, and really, can anyone say it enough? Thanks Dad. Couldn't/Wouldn't have even tried this without the years of pain and suffering I put you through.

its been a long couple of days

Well its been a long couple of days, whenever I tell people I am putting up a wall they are always amazed that I can do it... Again, thanks dad. People just don't know how "easy" it is to put up a wall. You measure twice, cut ones, make yourself two jigs (also known as a piece of wood cut to 14.5 inches) so that your beams will be 16 inches on center, and viola a wall

As Kyle and I were doing this work I couldn't help but think that around 16 years ago, I was in the basement of my parents place, framing up the walls with my dad and making the space that my soon to be wife, and soon to be son, would call home for a year... Time flies.

Note the pictures are really dark in the after... That is what happens when you get off work around 6, take a 1.5 hour commute home, stop to eat supper and THEN start wortking... Lots of up until midnight nights to get these walls up. One suggestion for anyone trying this, if you can afford it, buy/rent/steal a damn nail gun. We used screws, and mr Robertson, I miss you... Philips screws suck (Sorry Phil, but they do)

And yes, there is a LOT of extra wood here, shut up. I was making sure that when I was drywalling I would have something to screw to... Planning that ahead of time would have saved me a lot of pain, suffering, and stripped screws, but this eventually worked.

 And yes, I do my own electrical work. Seriously though, if my Dad hadn't let me pester him for all those years, I would not be as handy as I am, and wouldn't even be able to approach this project. Re-routing the electrical wiring, installing new plugs, framing (it only looks crooked, I swear that door frame is level, in fact whenever we put the level against anything it was level! Maybe the level is broken...)

The new before and after..

Taking time out to enter on the blog is nice, gives me some time to decompress and just chill

You can't see it real well, but thats a LOT of drywall that I brought home with me...:) Today was more demo, as I noted previously, just thought I would throw up some more before and afters, as well as hint at our next project..

Before;

After Day 1... note all the snakey junk on the walls? Thats glue to hold up the panelling, because the 80000 nails weren't enough.

After Day 2. 

The Bar, before (Thinking it might have been a better idea to keep it and let Kyle have it in his room)

After Day 1 (no change on Day 2) Note the patch of white on the bottom left of the picture? Thats filler, because the floor is concaved in that area. I don't really want to know why it is concaved in that area, though something tells me at some point I will know why.

Before, what a nice looking pool room... Maybe demoing it is not such a good idea.

And After, the wife speaketh, and the husband taketh away.

We' were done demo.... then we weren't...

So my contractor was at the house today going over what needed to be done, they tidied up some of the drywall upstairs and prepared the dining room for the new powerlam beam

Thats the area on the left there, it looked like they just cut the joists off from the drywall underneath, but once the drywall was down...

We found out we didn't have to do anything! First bit of good news... The other news my contractor broke to me was that (I was in denial here..) I would have to tear out the drywall in that area in the basement where the paneling used to be... Awesome, moar demo!

Sorry for the quality on that last one, snapped it with my Blackberry because I keep forgetting to bring my camera with me.. Anyways behind the drywall I find, some small holes in the insulation (awesome, now we need a cat..) and this space age stuff

Yup, THAT is the insulation... its literally paper thin...that is all that stands between whoever is sitting next to that wall (did I mention this is to be my office?) and the outside world.. awesome... this is being held up by 1/4 inch slats, and then bare cement... not much room to augment the insulation as I would need to move the heating system below and thats just not going to happen. I put in some pink foam , a whopping R1.5, spent about an hour doing it too, thinking the entire time, why am I bothering... but I'd kick myself later if I didn't try and put SOMETHING there... and tyvek over top.

We also built half of Kyles bedroom, amazing how 30 minutes of farting around with some two by fours on the ground can transform a space... stood it up, located a joist and slammed in a screw to stop it from moving around. Checked for level, and almost fell over... it was level.. Didn't ask too many more questions, threw in another screw and called it even. Tomorrow I get to buy a ramgun (not sure what the real name is) but basically it fires a 23 guage shell and powers a nail into concrete, can't wait. I think I'll make Kyle do the first one....:)

Is there such thing as good cheap carpet?

So not much going on over the last couple fo days, mostly because I've finished almost all the demo, and my contractor hasn't started yet... Couple of learnings however, as we have removed all of the tile... A hammer and a crow bar, will work for this, but are NOT the optimal tool. IF we had electricity, or that generator that I gave to my uncle when we moved from the last house... I would have rented the jack hammer and been done in about an hour.

Anyways, once we were finished (my neighbors who already had the fence fall and almost kill their dog, and who work nights, must love us for being over in the house every night for 2 hours bashing metal on metal on tile) it was time to start shopping for carpet.

The new bedroom we are creating, and Tristens bedroom were not on the hud report to be replaced, partially because they didn't know Kyles bedroom existed, and not sure why the other room with all the mold didn't get on the report but whatever...we headed over to the carpet warehouse to check out remnants.

Now if you know me/us you know we don't plan very well, so this was a big step, we were going to LOOK at carpet and get an idea on the price... Yeah, so now we have carpet for both rooms. But we ended up getting a pretty good deal on what we hope is good carpet. We paid 1.99$ a square foot installed, with under padding... Couldn't walk away from that deal.

Tomorrow, Kyle gets walls!

Dad's Office and Kyle's bedroom

So we got the dumpster, and took care of loading everything from the Garage into the dumpster. Its amazing how much a dumpster can hold. We had filled up about half the garage by the time we ran out of steam last week, and the dumpster was only about 1/3 full. We were careful when we started loading the dumpster to make sure everything was brought to the back... you pay by the pound, but that doesn't mean I want to have to get two dumpsters...

Once all that was cleaned up we removed all the panelling, and started taking apart the bar in the former pool room. This is eventually going to be Kyle's room and the new laundry room. For once I want to have a laundry room that doesn't feel like a cave, but is light, airy and BIG... we have 3 boys, well 4 if you count me, and we generate a LOT of laundry...

Before;





After


Only other thing I managed to get done was installing the vanity in the master bedroom. That, was hilarious on retrospect.... Here I am, upside-down, feet dangling over the toilet under the vanity with the bottom drawer open, and Tristen walks in. Dad, what's in the bathtub? SERIOUSLY?!?! How the heck would I know, look at me, am I in a position to see or do anything? Did I mention I'm claustrophobic? Anyways, after farting around with the vanity (its too big, the pipes are in a stupid place, so I had to brace it out from the wall to make it work) we finally give up for the day and go home.

Family Fun Time, in the Family Room!

Sunday, time for some demo! Kyle and I headed over to the house to take care of the family room, and Tristen's room. The previous post about the laundry room? Yeah we did that too, we were on a roll what can I say...:)

We used that trick Jaull taught us to remove the dry wall in 16ft long segments, one joist at a time. Took all of about an hour to demo the entire room.






Since we dont have the dumpster yet we're just throwing everything in the garage for now. I'd laugh until I cried if the bank called us now and said, just kidding....