Monday, April 30, 2007

Return of the 12 hour day

Felt pretty well-rested Sunday morning. Picked up some galvanized roofing nails along the way for the DensShield, and we were at the house by mid-morning.

All in all, things ran very smoothly! We were doing a pretty good job of correctly measuring and cutting the stuff, we finished insulating the last bit of outer wall at the foot of the tub, put in a few more 2x4 nailers in the corner, stuffing insulation in the tub cavity, glue'n, shim'n, nailin' that stuff up!

Paused around 2:15 to eat lunch (amazing left over wheat berry salad - man, so good). 'Round 2:45 we split to get some more drywall screws and some coffee. Last weekend we discovered that the restaurant slash wine and cheese shop in town is open on Sundays and they have great coffee. Previously if we wanted to get coffee on a Sunday we were limited to the weak gas station stuff, as the pastry place is closed Sunday's. But yeah, the coffee at this place - they serve it with real cream rather than half and half. Love this town.

We were making good progress but as we were pressing the final piece of wall into place, the edge caught on something and a bunch of the drywall-ish innards fell out rendering the approximately 5'x3' panel that we cut, dead. This was heartbreaking - one piece away from finishing this stage and it broke, and it was our last piece! Didn't lose cool, just searched our scraps and found one piece that we could use after we trimmed away the damage. What's an extra seam to tape at this point? I guess we'll find out!

I don't think I allowed myself to step back and look at the whole job until we quickly straightened the bathroom up - I wanted to see it empty, to see the shape and feel the dimensions. Wow. We built this room! Almost....

We also wanted to get this forest of a lawn mowed before we lose our chance to cut it with our push mower. Having mowed the likewise out of control lawn back in Esmont last weekend, Erika set to the task of cleaning the inside of the house. We've really let the place go, haha. Construction zone..lumber yard..tool depot..hardware pit. Meanwhile, I went outside to mow.

It took an hour to finish the front yard and it was getting pretty dark. The inside of the house looked great, the outside was definitely improved and smelled wonderful and fresh.

We took a few minutes to admire our work, then decided we'd start mudding and taping in the bathroom. Not bad for our first try! After an hour, we had half of one of the walls taped and the first coat of compound on all the nails and screws. Finished our nearly 12 hour day by 10, and were cleaned up back at the farm and eating dinner by 11:30.

-John


















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