So close yet...

After a refreshing night out with some friends, we dragged out of bed about as early as we could manage, into the bright, warm, sunny Saturday morning. Breakfasted at the picnic table, then gathered up our lunches and headed off to the tile shop for the DensShield tile backer that we plan to use instead of greenboard on the walls and ceiling around the tub.

We got to the shop at 11 and asked for our sales guy, who informed us that a contractor wiped them out of DensShield late in the previous day. There is nowhere else to buy this stuff in the area, as far as we know. After wiping away the tears, we drove up route 29 to hell, and spent the next three hours in hell picking up what amounted to only a handfull of items, plus drywall accessories and 6 sheets of DensArmor (not to be confused with DensShield), which is the new alternative to greenboard - better mold and moisture resistance. Viva la resistance!

We tied the stuff to the top of the van (which had been having some overheating problems earlier in the day even without any cargo) and left the hell store.

In hell, nobody has the answers to your questions. In hell, nobody cares. In hell, people talk very fast and very vague, and do not have time for specialties. In hell, they rip hours from your life in what seems like, well, less hours than that.

We headed to the house and finished up our shopping for drywall tools at our very friendly and helpful and chill local hardware store.

Basically, we got a few things done to prepare for closing up the walls: Finally figured out the wiring problem with the existing GFCI receptical and fixed it, reseated all of the outlets, switches, and light fixure boxes to their correct depths, built a wooden mounting bracket to suspend the ceiling light fixure box in the desired location between ceiling joists, caulked up the wall cavity, and constructed an post/double stud for the outer corner of the bathroom wall frame.

There would be no drywalling that day after all!

- John