Drywall (WebpageDate: 2006-06-07)

Progress continues! Since February we've been working on finishing up the walls. That means insulation and Drywall mainly, though we did take the time to install some new windows, too.

Insulation! That's a nice idea! When we opened up all the walls, you know how much insulation we found? One 16" wide strip between the living room and the kitchen. Oh, and the ceiling had some ancient insulation (fiberglass) that was so flat it probably wasn't doing much. That's it. It's no wonder this part of the house sucked heat like you wouldn't believe! It was cold in the winter! Actually, this past winter we had no problem keeping the new half of the house warm with only a wool blanket and plastic over the entrance to the remodeled end of the house.

Obviously, this time around we are going to insulate everything! And put up vapor barriers. Below are the pictures of the first bit of insulation we installed in the kitchen back in February:

Sorry, but I don't have any more pictures of us putting up insulation. Don't worry, you aren't missing much. It was pretty boring, though we did buy a pair of 16" gardening sheers to cut the insulation with. That was kinda amusing - but worked well :).

Once all the insulation was up, and the windows side-project done, it was time to buy some drywall. We bought a stack and got started. Damn those sheets are heavy! And they come in bundles of two. It was all Sarah and I could do to unload them and get them in the door. Each sheet weighs about 55 lbs, and I know we had more than 10 sheets. Our floor held the 550+lbs up just fine without making a complaint ;). Here is our pile of drywall about half depleted:

We started dry walling in the kitchen because it had the most large areas. Of course nothing was square so even nice large, should-be-square areas required many cuts, but as we found out, drywall is really nice to work with. It is easy to cut it to just the right dimensions - and breaking off the piece you just scored with the utility knife never grew old. Every time it was fun :)... for me anyway! Plus we bought some drywall-cutting drill bits for our dremmel that made cutting out holes for outlets easy.

Here are pictures of the kitchen. You'll notice the window wall has a different color of drywall - that is special stuff that is supposed to be more water resistant. Since that is where the sink is going to be, we thought that was a good idea :).

Next, some pictures of the living room in progress. We pretty much started with the kitchen and then worked our way around the room counter-clockwise.

Now you can see some pictures of the finished living room - well, almost finished. You can just see some of the green drywall in the kitchen on the far right.

And finally, the hallway.

As we went along, there were several "odds and ends" in the framing department to deal with - part of the reason this stage took so long. This part of the house wasn't framed for drywall, and when we reframed parts of it, we didn't take particular care to make sure the framing was drywall compatible. The result was several more 2x4s that were installed in various places just to hang drywall. In the end, though, it all came together nicely. We aren't quite done with the walls, but the bulk is done. Now it is just trim work. Our next task is to do the ceiling. Then finally we'll do the center wall. Then we get the joys of taping and mudding!