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.