Whoo! Passed The Screw Inspection!

Ya, I agree that its kinda silly to pay a building inspector to come to your
house and count the screws in the drywall...

But, ya know what? The drywall we demo'd was mostly being held up with
about 6 screws per sheet...a heck of a lot less than they should of been.
Ya wanna know why? Cause the job was done without permits!

Exciting picture of drywall and screws in the master closet.

Our inspector checked every room and every ceiling for proper screw placement
and spacing...don't know how he does it. I was starting to get woozy looking at
all of those screws on the white background...

Up Next:
Lots and lots of mudding and taping...lots and lots and lots of mudding and taping.
We are planning on doing this ourselves but I am worried about the time its
going to take...

Permit Expires in 29 days.
 

Drywall Almost Done!!!!!!!!!!!

Whoooo!!!!!!!!!!
Well, at least the hanging part.
Yay for moonlighting union drywallers!!!
Dang can those guys work,... ah, to be 25 again...
In two loooong days two young men got almost
the entire apartment hung!

The funky angles and things is what slowed them
down, or so they say...

Some Exciting Pics Of Drywall!!!!

Here's the hallway with the soffit.

The Family Room

The Two Bedrooms

The Kitchen

The drywallers loved all the outlets in this room....ahem...

Dining Room

And the bath off the kitchen...

Master Bath

Hallway to Master Bath

You can even see the ceiling is done in the Master Bath.

What Didn't Get Done

The master closet

My F up

I forgot about a conduit I needed to add to this area...

Well, it was a weekend of hell with them starting work each day at 7am and
going 10hrs....
The kids thought that the sound the drywall screws make when they are run in
was hilarious. 'Who Tooted!!!', 'Daddy, did you toot???'

Here's the reason why I hired two moonlighting union guys...FAST!!! and cheap.
The two legit bids we got for the job were basically the same, $7500. Yikes! I had
no idea it would cost that much....so...
Went and bought the drywall and screws myself ~$1300.
Hired the two guys to install it...                             $1600.
So far its cost me $2900 and I think its money well spent.
I wish they would of finished, but dang they were beat come Sunday night.

Now I gotta find some union tapers!


 

everybody's favorite hobby, drywall

Now that the manifolds and control panel are all mounted to the wall, we decided it would be fun to take them all down and put up some drywall behind them! hurrray!

The entire garage area needs to be drywalled for fire resistance, and although technically this will all be in a utility closet that is not part of the garage, it's better to be safe than sorry. We're actually planning on using 5/8" drywall everywhere on the first floor, although the only place it's actually required is in the garage.

So, we put the control panel on jacks and pulled the manifolds back from the wall and slid drywall in behind. Of course, all we could find was the standard 4'x8' sheets of plywood, which made drywalling our 9' walls extra fun.

Drywall isn't the worst task, it's just the one I've been saying from the start that I would LOVE to hire someone to do for us, if we can swing it. This was just one wall though, and it would've been way more trouble than it was worth to find and arrange someone to do it for us.

Plus, we still have the fancy drywall screw gun from work on our old house. I will say, this screwgun may have an understanding with Dan, but it clearly hates me.. I ultimately switched to a regular drill which saved the bit on the drywall gun, the drywall, time, and some of my sanity.

This little bit where the hoses come up out of the slab was fun..

I cut scraps to go fit in all the odd spaces, then smoothed it in with tape and mud

I couldn't use premixed mud, because it takes 24 hours to dry and we wanted to get this done and get the panel and manifolds back on the wall before 2009. The mix it yourself kind cures in as little as 20 minutes, depending on the kind you get. I got 45 minute curing, which has a 20 minute working time, which was perfect.

One thing I learned from mixing cement is that it's much easier if you start with water and add the dry mix to that, then add more water as needed.

Here's a lovely shot of me mudding around tubing...

.. which didn't turn out half bad, if I do say so myself.

The large joints between sheets look like a blind 10 year old did them, but this little bit that no one will ever notice looks lovely!

And then on to the other side of the doorway.

The plumbing straps had to be loosened to slide the drywall in behind, but that was the worst of the obstructions on this side, so it wasn't so bad

And viola!

I took another pic after I taped and mudded the seams, but I'd also just vacuumed, so all you can see is the playa reflection of the flash on all the dust

Now it's time to put everything back on the wall and start hooking things up