18_Continuation of Hardwood Flooring Installment

After dumping the construction debris on July 15^th, we went back to the house to continue installing the hardwood flooring. This time, I could help. I looked for and laid down the wood strips one row at a time, and then my husband nailed them. It saved time. Before, my husband had to look for one wood strip, position and adjusted it, nailed it, and repeated. Looking for a wood strip might take time because the woods had to be arranged harmoniously between long and short strips. Not only along the rows, the strips also had to look harmoniously down the rows. Two strip ends shouldn’t be close together in two adjacent rows. They should, at least, located 6 inch from each other. So dividing the tasks really speeded up the process.

Left: Hardwood flooring installment reached the door line. Right: An opened bundle of hardwood flooring on top of the installed ones.

The challenge was the same as before, the arching wood; they were not easy to nail. When we found such kind of wood, my husband would stronghold them straight while I nailed them.

We kept working until 5.30PM when we had to stop abruptly. The nail gun was broken. This nail gun had served my husband for more than 10 years, so it was time for it to retire. In addition, we had been working since morning, we got tired already; and the daylights were shimmering down due to the cloudy weather. It was time to stop working. We went back to the apartment; but managed to stop by at Lowes to buy a new nail gun.

The new nail gun.

On the next day, we continued working on hardwood flooring since the morning. In the beginning we had to adapt with the new nail gun. The nails didn’t come out evenly and the gun jammed once. But after we adapted to it, we could speed up.

We installed the wood pretty fast until the space became smaller towards the end. The space to hold the wood strips in position, especially the arched ones, was not enough. We had to maneuver ourselves to nail the strips. Towards the end, we adjusted our tasks; I nailed the strips while my husband held them on position. For the last row, the space was even narrower than the width of a strip. My husband had to chop each strip individually to fit into the available space.

Left: Installing hardwood flooring. Right: Installing the last piece of hardwood strip.

We finished at 8PM after working for 11 hours. During this time, we only had two small sandwiches for each. We were extremely hungry after work. Upon this, we didn’t bother to clean up; we rushed to a Mexican restaurant nearby to reward ourselves.

Left: The new installed hadwood flooring. Right: Two bundles of leftovers of hardwood flooring.

By finishing the hardwood-flooring installment, our house renovation goals were achieved. We had an open space that connects the living room, kitchen, and dining room with uniformed walls and floors. After this, we were ready for the next milestone, which was House Beautification. This meant, we put something new in the house to make it pretty, not necessarily improving the function. Examples for this were paintings, light and kitchen cabinet installments, and putting appliances. Just keep on visiting this website to see the latest story from us. Happy Reading! 

17_Van Issues

When we went back to our apartment on July 12^th night, our van stopped working. Luckily, it went off when we had reached the apartment’s parking lot; when we positioned our van for parking. My husband opened the hood and tightened the battery cables again. After that we parked.

What a close call…

Total Break Down

Apparently we were wrong, on the next day we found out that the van was completely broke down! My husband had to take a taxi to his office after arranging a tow service and a car workshop to fix our van.

Based on this, we had to re-strategize our plan to go to PA. First, we were thinking to rent a car; but it was too expensive so it was not worth it. Using public transportations would not help as well. They were slower because nothing arrived directly to our destination. In the end, we had to cancel our plan to PA.

Furthermore, we even cancelled our trip to the house because, again, renting a car would be too much; and using taxis back and forth was also expensive. We didn’t want to spend something, while knowing that we had to spend more for the van. Our purchase for kitchen cabinets had made our expenses going overboard. We didn’t want to spend more for something out of plan.

On July 14^th, our life test had not over. The car workshop informed us that the cause of the breakdown was the AC compressor. This basically made the other parts locked or not working. He also mentioned that this was common in Ford cars. The culmination of this information was, of course, the cost. It cost $990 to fix it! OMG! There goes our careful spending in buying a car…

Picking Up What We Left Off

At 5PM the van was ready, so we took it. We rushed to the house afterwards. When we arrived, we noticed that the roof was new and it looked good. At last, something worked well for us.

Our new 'hickory' color roof. No more chimney.

We continued laying the hardwood flooring from the bundle that had stayed inside the house. These woods had been cooled off, so hopefully they wouldn’t continue expanding. After finishing the whole bundle, we took the rest of the bundles inside to condition them overnight. We would continue installing the hardwood flooring after the wood got cool down tomorrow. 

The rest of hardwood flooring inside the house.

We then load the debris from the laminate and tile floorings to the van. This debris had piled up in the garage; we had to get rid of them tomorrow morning. These floorings were heavy especially the ones that attached to the mortar layer. We had to cut them into small pieces before loading them to the van, so I can lift them easily. In addition, we also bent the nails to make the debris safer to lift. However, in doing it, I stepped on nails for a few times! The last one even worst, I stepped on 3 nails at once! Even though I felt pain but I was afraid to open my shoes. I didn’t want to see some blood while we were still working in a dirty area; it would make my wound worse. So I just sucked it up and kept working. I just hoped that my tetanus shot had not expired yet.

Once I was back at the apartment, surprisingly, I found nothing! No wounds at my feet. That was great! I didn’t have to be worried of tetanus. Funnily, I found a cut on my right pinky despite wearing gloves all the time. Weird…

We fully loaded our van as if we punished it for the trouble that it gave us. The van even looked lower due to the burden it had to bear. We dumped the debris on the next day. 

Our load to the landfill.

16_Hardwood Flooring And Roof Installment

On July 8^th after the drywall works finish for that day, it was time for us to move on to the next step i.e. hardwood flooring installment in the dining room and kitchen. However, before that, we had to pull out the linoleum flooring and tiles.

Pulling Out Tiles

We started in the kitchen, trying to pull out the tiles. It wasn’t easy to pick out the tiles. In addition, the tiles were stuck using mortar, a mix of cement, fine sand, and water retention compound; so they were thick and heavy. It was too hard for me to pick them out, so there was nothing much that I can help.

Picking out tiles with the mortar layer still intact.

My husband told me to pick out nails from the old wood that we reclaimed. So far, picking out nails was my favorite task; I don’t know why. It was challenging and it looked cool at the same time. Sometimes I had to do movements that look like the fight scenes in Kung Fu movies. Yep, I am that weird…

Anyway, I picked out nails until I felt tired, which was soon. I was still tired from dumping the waste earlier and picking out nails seemed activate my tennis elbow that I thought it had healed. We called it the day with my husband finished picking out around half of the tiles, but the mortar layer remained intact.   

In the next morning, surprisingly I felt sorer in my legs rather than my arms. I had a knot in my calf that made me walk with a limp. I decided to rest, beside nothing much that I could do. My husband went back to the house in the morning to continue picking out tiles.

By lunchtime, he finished picking out the tiles, but not the mortar layer. To add more surprises, under the mortar layer, there was linoleum flooring beneath. So whoever installed the tiles never really bothered to take out the linoleum, and now we had 3 layers of floor. They were linoleum, mortar, and tiles. It would need a lot of work to take them all.

The mortar layer below the tiles.

My husband went back to the apartment to have lunch and picking me out. I thought I wouldn’t do anything but cheering him. However, there was something that I could help; being an extra hand for my husband.

On picking out the floors, we used a crowbar to pry section by section. So my husband pried a section of the floors, as much as he could, I put a block of wood under the open section to keep it tilted. And then he moved to pry another section; I put another block. This continued until he could pick out a portion of the two layers.

Left: Linoleum flooring underneath the mortar layer. Right: Putting blocks to help  prying the rest of the flooring.

For clearing the debris, still I couldn’t help. The debris was heavy due the cement component. I couldn’t imagine how we are going to lift them to the landfill. They had to be cut in small pieces.

Left: The mortar and linoleum floorings with a lot of nails sticking out. Right: Some parts had been taken away, showing off the sub-floor beneath.

Picking out the whole floors was a tiring job. Nonetheless we could finish it at 6.30PM. We decided to end the day and left the linoleum flooring in the dining room for the next day’s task.

The sub-floor underneath the tile flooring.

Taking Out Linoleum Flooring

On July 10^th we ripped off the linoleum flooring. This job was easier than taking out the tiles plus linoleum in the kitchen. Basically it was just taking out one layer of wood. The challenge lay on taking out the flooring on the edge of the wall. We kept scratching the new installed drywalls; and only in the last two pieces, we managed to remove the flooring without scratching the wall.

Left: The linoleum flooring with a lot of nails sticking out. Right: The drywalls got scratched.

We finished the work in two hours and discussed the next strategy. This was our last demolition works. After this, the works would be putting in something; no more putting out.

Left: The sub-floor in the dining room. Right: The whole backroom with no flooring.

The drywall finishing jobs would be finished on the next day. After that, we had to paint primer on them to see if there were any flaws in the finishing, for example the seam between two drywalls still visible. And based on that, the drywall contractor could perfect the finishing job. My husband had his painting tools back in his hometown in PA. So we thought to drive back there to take them during the weekend.

Roof Upgrade… Finally!

On July 11^th my husband received a call from MND Construction that the roofers would come the next day to install the new roof. This was a surprise because we asked to get 3 days notification. The reason: there was a chimney without a fireplace in the house. The fireplace was closed behind several closets in the bedrooms and the hallway, leaving unused space. Upon knowing his, we wanted to use the space to expand the closets in the master bedroom and bathroom. I know, in horror movies, closed fireplaces could be the source of all evils. But we would take our chances.

Anyway, back to the chimney. Since we wouldn’t need it, it would be better to knock it off. It costs around $150 to take the chimney out, so we would do it by ourselves to save money. That was why we needed 3 days; we never done it before, we needed time.

So, having one evening to take the chimney out was surely not enough time. But it seemed that we didn’t have other options; so we decided to let the roofers do it.

On July 12^th we went to the house very early because the roofers said they would come around 7 – 10AM. I was left in the house alone to wait for the roofers. I had to ensure that they would do what we wanted.

However, until 10 minutes before 10AM, there were no signs that they would come. So I was sure that they wouldn’t come at all. I waited for my husband to come for lunch break, and he came at 1PM. Knowing that the roofers didn’t come, he called MND Construction. Annoyingly, the reason they didn’t come was the stock of the shingles was running out; and because of that, they could only do the job next week. Really? And they didn’t bother to call?

This had become too much. When we first called the company in early June, we got fast response. But after we ordered and paid half of the cost, the company became unreachable. It wasn’t easy to contact; the phone line was always busy. And once we could reach them, the receptionist said that we would get early notification. But now, this happened.

My husband dropped me back to the apartment before he went back to work. After work, he picked me up again. When we arrived at the house, we saw some boxes in front of the garage. They were parts of the new roof. Apparently even though they said the roofing works would be next week, they dropped the materials anyway.

I looked at the boxes and found the color said ‘mission brown’. Wait, what?! We ordered ‘hickory’ color, not ‘mission brown’. What kind of messing up was this? Even though ‘mission brown’ was not an ugly color, but messing up the order was a sign of poor working performance. Oh God…

Left: Some materials of roof. Right: The color mentioned on the package was not according to what we ordered. 

Luckily, in less than hour, we received a call from Ruben, the guy who pitched the roofing works. He said he and his team would do the work tomorrow! We told him about our concerns: the chimney and the wrong color. He assured us that he would knock off the chimney for free and the color of the shingles would be ‘hickory’. Upon hearing this, we decided not to be present in the next day during the roofing works.

Replacing Sub-Floor And Putting Underlayment

After taking out the whole floor, we were ready to put the new hardwood flooring. However, in order to make sure that the hardwood flooring would settle securely, we had to strengthen the sub-floors. When we took out the strongly attached floors, sometimes we damaged the sub-floors. Now we had to replace these sub-floors.

We cleaned the repaired sub-floors and put a plastic underlayment. We finished the day after putting 1 row of underlayment because tomorrow the roofers would come around 7 – 10AM. We needed to go to bed early.

Left: The damaged sub-floors was being taken out. Right: The damaged sub-floors was replaced.

Left: Another damaged sub-floor was being taken out. Right: The replaced  sub-floor.

On July 12^th, my husband came home with good news. Our stuff could be kept longer in the storage until October 18^th! That was a big relief. We could continue our construction works for the rest 7 weeks without worrying where to put our furniture. Whenever we were ready, we could ask for our stuff to be delivered.

At the house, we started to lay the hardwood flooring after putting the whole underlayment earlier in the morning, when we were waiting for the roofers. The challenge of putting the hardwood flooring during summertime was the wood expanded. In addition, the floor line was not 100% straight; I guessed there was no floor line that perfectly straight. So we had to be very careful to prevent the hardwood flooring from arching. After laying 3 rows of hardwood flooring, we had to finish because it was getting dark and we didn’t have room lamps anymore.

Above left: One layer of plastic underlayment. Below left: The whole floor was covered with plastic underlayment. Right: The new installed hardwood flooring.

15_Plan Adjustment: Kitchen Remodeling

We took a break after finishing the first installment of hardwood flooring on July 3^rd. At this time, we were debating on how far should we install the hardwood flooring in the kitchen. If we installed until the border between eating area and kitchen cabinets, and left the tiles around the kitchen cabinets, that would make the whole kitchen looked weird. But if we installed in the whole kitchen, and later on we wanted to remodel the kitchen, we might have to rearrange the flooring with adding or cutting it.

In addition, we left some of the wood paneling wall around the kitchen cabinets, thinking that we didn’t want to remodel the kitchen now. The cabinets looked fine and functional and the appliances seemed new. But again, having a kitchen room with two different walls and floors would look weird. If we remodeled the kitchen later, we might encounter problems that we should have taken care earlier. So, after thinking it through, we decided to remodel the kitchen now. It would add to our expenses but it would be a good investment.

Tearing Down The Kitchen

So we went back to the house at 2PM and started to tear down the kitchen right away. We tore down the laminate flooring in the dining room, wood paneling wall in the kitchen, and the kitchen cabinets. My husband secured all the appliances before he tore down the cabinets. We moved the refrigerator to the living room because we used it daily, while other appliances such as the stove and dishwasher were stored in a separate room.

The refrigerator was moved to the living room.

Removing kitchen cabinets, step by step.

I personally tore down the laminate flooring. This wasn’t a difficult job; I finished it within an hour. However, we found that beneath the laminate flooring, there was linoleum flooring and it was not easy to take it out. Although linoleum itself is just a sheet, it takes strong glue to attach it. In this case, it was attached to wood flooring that was nailed to the subfloor; that was what made it difficult to be taken out. Well at least it was difficult for me; anyway, I didn’t continue.

Left: Laminate flooring in the dining room. Right: Me, removing the laminate flooring by using a crowbar.

Left: An insulation sheet underneath the laminate flooring. Right: Linoleum flooring lay beneath the laminate flooring.

We finished working at 6PM because we didn’t really have much energy. We finished with half of the kitchen cabinets being torn down.

From Above Left, Above Right to Below: Step by step in removing kicthen cabinets.

More Drywalls

After having a long resting time, my husband felt very energized on July 4^th. He even was ready to work from 6AM! So he went to the house alone and continued tearing down the kitchen cabinets for the next 3 hours. In the afternoon, he finished ripping off the remaining kitchen wall, included the one that divided the living room and the kitchen.

Above Left: The kitchen cabinets were completely removed. Below Right: The wall was also removed.

Since we had another open walls, we had to close them with more drywalls. So we spent the evening by installing drywalls in the kitchen. This time the challenge lay on maneuvering between the water pipes. We also found that there was a hole in the wall that went through the laundry room! That was like a freeway for cockroaches. So we covered the hole with an insulation sheet taken from the dining room, before we installed the drywall.

Installing new drywalls behind the water pipes.

Left: A hole between kitchen and laundry room. Right: The hole was covered with an insulation sheet from the dining room.

The hole was covered with drywalls.

 At 8PM, my husband felt that the tiredness had caught him up; so we stopped working. However, we ate out before going home to celebrate my first 4^th of July. This would be a good memory: celebrating American biggest holiday by doing construction work.

More Beams

Since we opened more space i.e. the wall between the kitchen and living room, we needed to install another beams. So, on July 5^th, during lunchtime, we bought another beams. This time, the beams were not as long as the previous, thus, it wasn’t so heavy. Later on in the evening, we installed the beams to create a new space. Like before, we built supporting studs first, knocked out the original studs, put the beams on the supporting studs and then put screws on them.

Buying another beams.

From Above Left, Below Left to Right: Step by step in installing beams.

Kitchen Design And Appliances

As we had an open kitchen space now, we took measure to draft a kitchen layout. We planned to build an L-shape kitchen plus an island for the stove. Since the stove wouldn’t be close to any wall, we decided to have a telescopic downdraft as its vent; rather than having a hanging vent in a middle of the kitchen.

We also decided to buy a new smaller refrigerator. The available refrigerator was too big and not in-line with our design. Beside, we didn’t need big refrigerator, it would consumed too much energy; we didn’t think we would store much food for the two of us. Furthermore, during the renovation, we often bumped and made some dents to that big refrigerator.

Lastly, we decided to buy a microwave to complete our kitchen appliances. Microwave wasn’t included in the house purchase, so we needed one. We ordered all the appliances online as they were still on discounts for the 4^th of July holiday. 

With this plan adjustment, we would need longer time to renovate. This meant it would be better to have our furniture delivery being pushed back. So earlier that day, my husband requested for extending the storage time. He argued that his transfer date was being pushed back several times, which made us couldn’t plan our moving better. This was true, because at that time, we didn’t have any clue when my Green Card would be issued. That was why my husband’s transfer date was kept getting changed.

Drywalls, Drywalls, And Drywalls

On July 6^th, we continued installing drywalls in the kitchen and on the new installed beams. We also installed an additional small beam at the opening of the hallway to mark the edge of the renovation project. Hence, the drywall contractor would only work until that edge, and not through the entire hallway.

Installing drywalls to the remaining open walls.

Left: Installing small beam as an edge. Right: The small beam was covered with drywall.

We sped up the work because in the next day, the L & L Drywall contractor would come to finish the entire drywalls. We then took out all the lamps in the living room, kitchen, and dining room areas, which made the rooms become dark after sunset.

Above Left: The lamp in the dining room. Below Right: No more lamp in the dining room.

Above Left: The lamp in the kitchen. Right: The lamp was taken out from the kitchen.

Finishing drywalls took several steps of coating; with the first one is the longest. The time needed gradually decreasing over the next steps. So on July 7^th, we didn’t do anything as the drywall guys needed the whole day to do the first coating.

Drywall finishing works.

Dumping The Construction Debris

On July 8^th, Clayton from L & L Drywall said that he would need a half-day to work on the drywall. To make use of time, we decided to dump the construction debris that had been piled up in the garage. We browsed on the Internet and found out that there was a city landfill in the downtown area. The price for dumping private/household construction waste was $20/load.

So we filled up our van as much as we can. Not all the debris could fit in. Woods, that longer than our van’s length, couldn’t go in. So did broken kitchen cabinets. We went to the city landfill and found that there were many other cars dumping their household construction waste and old furniture like sofas or mattresses. We also found out that pickup trucks couldn’t have as much load as our van; so we had better use of the $20 dumping price.

Left: Our construction debris on the first dumping. Right: Our load for the second dumping.

We had to put the waste in the available big dumpsters in a place that looked like a parking lot. Once they are full, big trucks would come to take them to the landfill and put empty ones at the lot. When we unloaded the debris, I realized that I was the only female who did that. Other females were just there accompanying their spouses unloading the waste. Even if they helped, they only carried light stuff such as cardboards or small amount of wood. I felt like Wonder Woman.

After learning on dumping in the city landfill, we decided to dump the rest of our waste. We went back to the house, cut the remaining woods and broken cabinets into smaller pieces and loaded them to the van. We drove back to the landfill and dump them.

Kitchen Cabinets

We spent the day at the apartment; we took a rest and discussed about the new kitchen cabinets. My husband found a website about kitchen cabinetmakerin Pennsylvania (PA) that had very good reviews. Seriously, all the reviewers gave 5 out of 5 stars, nothing less. Of course, we were interested; but as once might assume, it was expensive. The cabinets were made from solid wood. Most cabinets in the hardware chain stores were made from mixed wood or engineered wood, where residuals of different woods are mixed and compressed with resin and wax to form dense wood.

We then went to Home Depot to see whether it had similar options; but it had not. As mentioned before, all of the kitchen cabinets available were made from engineered wood. We figure that Lowes would have the same, since they were both in the same type of business. So, we decided to order our kitchen cabinets from the one in PA as an investment. 

14_First Installment Of Hardwood Flooring

My husband’s specialty is installing hardwood flooring; so he couldn’t wait to start such task. We bought unfinished hardwood flooring pretty early, on June 29^th; and yes, I had to help him lifting the 24 bundles of them. We had to lift them 3 times: from the store to the shopping cart, from the shopping cart to the van, and unload them from the van to our garage.

24 bundles of hardwood flooring, and yes, I had to lift them too.

Chafed Hands

These flooring didn’t have smooth edges, of course, and I didn’t wear any gloves to lift them. I ended up having chafed hands L it felt horrible, my hands were dry and in pain. I guessed the pain from the chafed hands was accumulation from all the works before, because I didn’t have gloves. Upon this, I asked my husband to buy me working gloves, and on June 30^th finally I had working gloves. They really helped my works afterwards. I didn’t have to feel afraid of rough edges, splinters, or even sticking up nails, because my hands were well covered. I felt like I could use all my power to lifting things; before, it seemed I restrained myself because I didn’t want to hurt my hands so much. What a difference a pair of gloves made!  

Finally, I had my own working gloves. 

Filling Up The Gaps From The Walls

We didn’t work on hardwood flooring until July 1^st after we finished installing the drywalls. And even though we would love to replace all the floors in the kitchen and dining room, we shouldn’t work on them right away. In order to make the floors look uniformed and seamless, we had to fill up the gaps from the previous walls that started from the living room. In filling up the gaps, we couldn’t just put new hardwood flooring in the gaps; that would not make the transition seamless. We had to take out the flooring around the gaps as well, and then rearranged the flooring in continuous row.

The gap near the door before we took out the surrounding hardwood flooring, while the gap below had the surrounding hardwood flooring being taken out.

After we took out the hardwood flooring around the gaps, I had to clean the open floor from any dust and debris. Here, again, my Cross Fit trainings had prepared me. Even though I used an industrial vacuum cleaner, and not just a broom, still I had to squat and bend a lot to ensure all the crevices were clear.

Next step, we put plastic underlayment, a layer between subfloors and hardwood flooring. The underlayment provided insulation and protection from any crawling creatures underneath. Earlier we thought we could finish putting the hardwood flooring, but apparently we overestimated our energy level, as always. We finished the day after covering all the gaps with plastic underlayment, and that was already around 10 PM. I ended up, not only feeling tired and sore, but also feeling very sweaty and sticky because I also did lawn mowing outside.

Plastic underlayment was installed before the installation of hardwood flooring.

Killing Time Activity: Lawn Mowing

As my husband doing the hardwood flooring, there was not much that I can help, so I decided to try out the new battery run lawn mower. I never mowed any lawn before, as I never had any big yard in my house in Indonesia. Beside, back in Indonesia, it wasn’t common to mow using the lawnmowers; in general, we used sickles. So first, I had to learn on operating the lawnmower. The machine weighed 72lbs or 32kg and I had to push it around.

Me, mowing the lawn.

After feeling confident on moving the lawnmower around, I started mowing at the front yard that has total area of around 210’ or 19.5m². I didn’t think it was a tiring task, but doing it in a hot and humid weather made my sweat running pretty hard. It took me around 75 minutes to finish the job, so it was a pretty good workout. My shirt was all wet and I didn’t bring any spare shirt L. This was the sweatiest and stickiest day for me.

Expanding Hardwood

We woke up with full body sore on July 2^nd. We had to drag ourselves at 10AM and my husband started to lay hardwood flooring directly. Meanwhile, I mowed the backyard lawn. I didn’t know whether the terrain was less flat than the front yard or I was just tired. I couldn’t finish the job at once. I had to take a break from the 84^oF/32^oC heat even though the back yard was smaller than the front yard.

Meanwhile my husband had trouble in installing the hardwood flooring; the wood was expanding. This might be caused by the younger age of the wood, so they were still growing. Another possibility was the wood had been in storage for a long time, especially during summer time, so they had expanded. The best time to install hardwood flooring was after they were being cut, so they didn’t have time to expand.

In the end, we had to leave the floor with the last row uninstalled. The remaining space was smaller than the hardwood pieces. It was late already and we didn’t have more energy to trim hardwood pieces, so we just went home.

Left: the closed gaps in the living room and the open one between the kitchen and dining room. Right: The last remaining row had smaller space than the hardwood pieces.

On June 3^rd, our energy level hit really low. We felt very exhausted. Yet we pushed ourselves to finish the last row of hardwood flooring. My husband let me nailed the last strip. We then rewarded ourselves with walking around to different stores, looking for ideas for kitchen cabinets. 

Left: I nailed the last strip. The gaps in the living room were all covered with no trace of previous walls.

13_Installing Dry Walls

On June 27^th I had to go to my husband’s work, so during lunchtime we went to the house to discuss the next step. As mentioned earlier, we wanted to have uniformed drywall. At this point, my husband thought to have a seamless transition between the walls and the ceilings. Right now all the ceilings in the house were popcorn ceilings, something that was popular in the 70s and 80s. To make the walls and ceilings seamless, we had to scrape out the popcorn. So we tried scraping and it came out easy; we thought we were going to scrape the whole ceilings by ourselves.

Unfortunate Events

However, we had some unfortunate events afterwards. First, my cellphone suddenly went blank for no reason. It didn’t even fall or bumped to something, but it froze out completely. So we planned to go to Best Buy, the place where we bought it, to get it repaired.

Unfortunately, on the way there, we bumped a rear end of a car in front of us! We hit the break on time, but apparently the break fluid wasn’t enough to stop the car on time. Luckily, it wasn’t major; it was only a minor scratch. But still, our trip took longer because we had to wait for the police to settle the case.

When we finally arrived at Best Buy, the customer service officer told us that they couldn’t repair it. We had to contact the cellphone company. Argh!

I was about to end the day. We were still tired from yesterday and now it seemed everything went wrong for us. However, my husband insisted to do something in the house to fix the day.

Achievement Of The Day

So we went to the house to install the drywalls. We ended up covering the two walls in dining room with drywalls.

Replacing some parts of the wall in the dining room.

I Am A Skyscraper

I spent the whole morning on June 28^th trying to fix my cellphone. I had to reset, reinstall, and update various software that took a lot of time. If there was a lesson to be learnt here, I am done with fruity electronic products. Meanwhile, my husband used his lunchtime break to keep scraping the ceilings.

After work hours, my husband picked me up. He continued working on installing the drywalls. This time, it was on the beam and around. When installing dry walls, I got to help on lifting the walls and holding them while my husband put the screws on. Apart from that, there was nothing much that I could do to help. All the measuring, cutting, and trimming; they were all skillful tasks that I had not mastered.

The beams were covered with drywalls.

So to kill time, I scraped the ceilings. It was an easy task but it was arduous. First, I had to position the ladder carefully. This position determined the angle of my neck, whether I needed to tilt it a lot or a little bit. The more I had to tilt, the easier I got my neck sore. Second, I could only use my right hand to scrape fast. If I used my left hand, my scrape speed was slower; and this made my neck had to tilt longer which was tiring.

I am a Skyscraper.

My scraping work.

Nonetheless, I became good in doing it. My husband even called me as ‘Skyscraper’. That would be my alter ego in the Star Wars universe. I might be not a Skywalker, but I am a Skyscraper.

No More Scraping

By June 29^th we were getting nervous because we only had less than 2 weeks to finish the renovation before our furniture came. Even though we would have 4 full days on July 1^st – 4^th due to holidays, we still had to install the drywalls, scraping the ceilings, hire a contractor to finish the drywalls, and installing the hardwood flooring. Right now, scraping had become too much. This task felt like forever; and in places where the glues were thick, they were hard to clean completely and sometimes we made holes because we scraped them too hard.

We reconsidered about scraping. This was not part of the project before, so it was better to stop it and let a drywall contractor do it. We called a drywall contractor and told him our inquiries which included finishing the installed drywalls and put new drywalls on the ceilings. We also put a border of where the new ceiling should stop; it would stop in front of the hallway.

We finished the day by cleaning the mess from scraping. Thanks to the industrial vacuum cleaner, we cleaned the mess easily.

Left: The scraping mess. Right: No more scraping mess. 

Our industrial vaccuum cleaner.

More Drywalls Installation

To completely replace the wood paneling, we needed more drywalls. So, on June 30^th we bought more drywalls. We spent the evening installing the drywalls; only to find out that we needed 1 more sheet of drywall!

Above left: The back wall before drywall installation. Below right: The back wall needed 1 more sheet of drywall.

We had no choice but went back to Lowes for buying 1 sheet of drywall on July 1^st. At this point, we felt tired physically and mentally. We kept going back and forth to buy similar things over and over again, which meant we lost some time and gas. We should have planned this better. But on the other hand, drywalls were not my husband’s specialty. It was understandable if we couldn’t get good estimation.

Anyway, July 1^st was the first day of the 4-day weekend. We planned to start early but ended up waking late. We were too tired from the previous works. We had to drag ourselves and started working at 11AM. We finished installing the whole drywalls by noon. Finally we were finished with drywalls; we were ready to have the drywall contractor to finish them and we could move on to do the hardwood flooring.

Finished drywall installation.