Getting Plastered!

Things have been happening inside the house - messy things.

All the new construction, and existing, walls are getting buttoned up with drywall. 

(And not with the toxic nuclear Chinese stuff either!)

FYI: Drywall has 2 phases - and both are equally fun.

1) Rough Drywall - cutting board after board of drywall and anchoring it to the studs. Could be nailed or endless mind numbing drilling of countless drywall fasteners. Not to mention - you need to cut and account for every little detail or crevice. Got light fixtures? Outlets? Fashionable protruding fire sprinklers?

You need to cut holes for all of them!

Bathrooms in progress..

The Office taking shape.

The Jacuzzi was looking tempting, until we had to pull it and

drywall the bathroom..

2) Finish Drywall.  After all the tedious cutting and screwing the drywall, then it's time to tape and "mud" all the seams. Easy enough huh? Just let it dry - sand to a smooth finish. Not smooth enough - just add some more mud, let dry and sand again. What? You found a blemish? Put the dust mask on again and repeat step #1! A guaranteed recipe that you'll be tasting drywall dust for the next 3 weeks!

Getting "high" in the bedroom.

When will all the

sanding end??

Oh, another tip about drywall dust. It has this Harry Potter property to magical penetrate any slight gap or leak in plastic and seek out the entire house and coat everything to an altitude of about 10,000 feet in an extremely fine grain dust.  Once working in our kitchen, I used a hand grinder to smooth out a plaster corner to better fit an outlet cover.  Why I was only going to grind for a few seconds - why bother with the hassles of hanging plastic? After about a minute of grinding - the kitchen was nearly obscured in dust and we had to wash pretty much every dish in the cabinets until 4am in the morning.

Needless to say - I am a big fan of plastic!