A meandering blog with no clear topic. You will find me talking about knitting, building, kids, social and economic issues, Alaska, and lots of other stuff.

Monday, November 12, 2007

sheetrock



Another blurry picture, this one of the wall in our living room, WITH SHEETROCK ON IT. This was taken with the crappy camera in James's cell phone, as I forgot to bring the new digital camera for the second weekend in a row. We have a lot of sheetrock done: the really hard part of the vaulted ceiling, the short walls upstairs, the entire front wall of the loft (the one with the window in it), one piece in the kitchen, the living room side of the bathroom, and the entire north wall of the house (as seen in the picture). But we still have a LOT to go. It will probably take a couple more weekends to get the rest of the sheetrock done. But we are hoping to spend Thanksgiving weekend up there, and get all the sheetrock, taping and mudding done. Cross your fingers. Mine are.

I was talking about the hard part of the vaulted ceiling. That was what got sheetrocked first, because the rented scaffold had to go back. These lovely pieces of sheetrock hang on the ceiling about 20 feet above the living room. We had to carry each 4' x 8' piece of sh... uh... sheetrock up the stairs, pass it over the railing for the loft onto the scaffolding and climb up a ladder. Then, James would hold this huge, heavy piece of sheetrock in place while I quickly darted around with the drywall gun putting screws into it to hold it up before his arms gave out. That was the plan, anyway.

The sad reality is that up until that point, I had never done drywall, and had never used the drywall gun. I hate to admit this, but I have shied away from power tools to a large extent, and am hopelessly inept in their use. (I think this dates to seeing my sister's paternal grandfather missing some fingers from an accident with a saw. It scarred me for life. Him too, in a more literal sense.) Anyway, I had a hard time working the drywall gun. There was one memorable moment when his temper gave out about the same time as his arms and a 4' x 8' piece of drywall got thrown across the house.

I don't feel too bad about my aversion to power tools. My mom doesn't do ladders. Ladders don't bother me for the most part, as long as they stay where you put them. I don't do power tools. I just don't see any benefit to putting any part of my body within range of something sharp that is moving rapidly. But when there is only you, and stuff needs to get done, you do it, regardless. And the ceiling? It's up. And James says that once it is taped and mudded, you won't even be able to tell that we did a crappy job.

After that ordeal, the rest was a piece of cake.

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