Tuesday
Tuesday I took a break from the house during the day. We were close to needing to start turning our underwear inside out and Maria looked a bit nervous every time I left the room. So we spent the day together doing laundry, and I didn't go work until that evening.
After dinner, Daniel, Josh and I went to the house to get serious about some drywall repairs. This was my first experience with drywall, and I was excited to "do it myself". Josh and Daniel fixed the gaping entryway ceiling hole and the wall in the eat-in area of the kitchen while I worked on the powder room. THIS is when I used the Makita Multi Tool I mentioned yesterday. While I realize you can cut drywall with a simple razor, it's much more fun with a power tool. Daniel gave me a "tutorial" and I painstakingly measured each piece. I'm slightly anal about stuff like that and I didn't want to mess up my first time. The boys also got the drywall hung upstairs before calling it a night.
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| Powder Room - Before, drywall was cut off due to mold. |
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| Powder Room - After new drywall was hung (mostly) by me |
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| Eat-In Kitchen Area - Daniel and Josh working on the other side of the wall |
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| Makita Multi Tool in action. It worked great for cutting the drywall cleanly |
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| Just showing off... That's some precise measuring right there! |
Wednesday I spent about 4 hours at the house trying to prep for the walls and ceilings to be textured. Even though we're not living at the house, all of our furniture was moved there so we wouldn't have to pay for 2 moves. Of course when the texture guy comes in, that stuff will spray EVERYWHERE. While it does wipe off with water, I don't really want to be cleaning every crevice of our furniture after he's done. So I moved any smaller piece that I could pick up by myself down to the basement. Everything else got wrapped in plastic. In the bedrooms, I just wrapped the group of furniture together in the middle of the room since it was only a few pieces. In the living room though we had way too much so I wrapped each piece of furniture individually so it could be moved around when the crew textured the ceiling. Fun stuff.
I also went around pulling out any screws or nails from the walls. There was a screw that had been painted over in the living room that I couldn't get to budge with a screwdriver. I texted Daniel and he said I could just yank it out with a pry bar. The results were a little unexpected...
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| The "Innocent" Screw |
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| The resulting hole |
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| Seriously, who uses an anchor that big?! |
We also had some items delivered from Lowe's - exciting! The Pergo floors have to sit in the house for a few days to "adjust" before being installed. They will be laid in the entry, hallway, kitchen and dining room. Some combination of this vanity will be in all 3 bathrooms.
Daniel came after work and put the first coat of mud on the walls. He's polite so he didn't even bat an eye at the gaping hole I left in the living room wall. He just slapped mud right over it. Good man.
Thursday
Thursday I decided to continue to prepare for the texture guy as most of our projects are on hold until he does his thing next Tuesday. I started upstairs with the intent to cover the windows with plastic. When I got on my stool, I couldn't believe how filthy they were up close. You could barely tell they were supposed to be white! Cigarettes leave a nicotine residue on the surfaces of rooms that are smoked in. Since everyone in this house had smoked, all the window frames were covered in a greasy light brown residue that also caught all the dust in the room to leave the windows pretty gross. I spent a couple hours just on the second floor thoroughly scrubbing the inside of each window (especially the frames) then hanging the plastic and sweeping the floors after. The picture didn't quite capture how bad they really were but you get the idea. The outside of the windows can wait, for now I'm only concerned about getting the inside ready to live in.
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| Before |
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| After |
Daniel stopped by before band practice to put another coat of mud on the walls. One thing we've learned is the more time you spend adding coats and sanding the mud, the better results you'll get. No more rushing through for us! Having a lot on your To Do List is not an excuse for doing a substandard job.
Friday
We are almost at a pause point with the house until the texture is done. We can't prime and paint until the texture sprayed. No laying floors until we paint. No vanity and toilet installs until the floors are down. You get the picture. So today I only went to the house to let the dogs out. They are adjusting well and enjoying their new fenced in backyard. Daniel went over for about an hour after work to sand the walls and apply another layer of mud. Here are some photos I took of the mud job after the first coat earlier this week.
I alluded to it in the previous paragraph but to say it plainly, we currently have no toilets installed in the house. So if you're going to come help, don't drink too much water beforehand...
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| New spot for the Master bath toilet? Pretty convenient location as it's right about where our bed will be. |
So that's most of what we've worked on for the past 4 days. I tell you what, this working at a construction site is tough on the body. I've got one armed scratched up and stopped counting my bruises when I got to 10. I do bruise very easily, but I think this might be a record. Ah well, all in a days work!
Come back and see us again soon so you don't miss any of the action!
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