Demo(n) in the Hall

Before I started working on the hall closet, I finished cutting the drywall in the doorway between the den and the utility/entry room.

The next work to do was to demo the hall wall to make room for the doorways that will give access to the washer, dryer, and water heater.

This is what the area looked like before I took a sawzall to it.

And this is what it looked like after the saw had its fill (more next weekend).

Big difference! There are two things that my spouse and I have noticed about this new void. First it seems to have made our bedroom door not so tight in its frame, and secondly it creates a sense of doom when we walk down the hall at night without the lights on. We like the non-sticking door. We do not like the dark forbidding feeling. We're pretty sure drywall and doors will take care of the dread.

WMD (Walls Mostly Done)

Last weekend we wired the heater and tried to get all of the drywall up on the walls before the end of the day Sunday. We almost made it. We had to make the most use of the brother-in-law before he left (which happens tomorrow). Drywall installation requires both tall and short work plus lifting and cutting. These are all things he's become accustomed to.

We really got a lot done considering how much time we had (there were a few errands and emergencies that interrupted us such as car batteries and washing machines). More about washing machines later.

One of the things that didn't get finished was cutting out the arch in the doorway. We just ran out of energy and time. The doorway now reminds us of the movie Being John Malkovich.

The other thing we didn't do is fully seal up the closet wall. That was on purpose, though. We still need to demo and reframe the hall side of the closet for the doors, and it will be nice not to have to walk all the way around.

Here's a picture of a funny moment (that's probably not at all funny to anybody else).

The b-in-l was using a tool belt to hold all the drywall screws. I had bought some more screws (in a smaller box) and put them in the larger empty box so that we would know where to find them. The b-in-l ran out of screws (in his tool belt) and asked if I'd bought more screws and where they were. I said, "In the box." He didn't understand or didn't believe that there were more screws in the box the he had emptied earlier in the day. To prove that there were indeed screws in the box, I handed them to him. This photo captured either the moment of realization or the expression of incredulity at my choice of screw storage location (I'm not sure which).

Lights, Electrical, Den!

I'd like to start this post by showcasing the framing that the brother-in-law did. There is currently, and there will continue to be, a doorway between the utility room and the den. In order to better facilitate an easy and pleasing transition between the two rooms, we decided to widen the doorway and shift it towards the wall. Here's a photo of the newly framed doorway.

The wall next to the doorway is a location that we think is a good candidate for another heater so we're going to install one. We reframed the lower portion of the wall because we wanted to center the heater on the wall. Here are some photos of the reframed wall and of the heater installation.

You know what? It's dark in this room. It would have been a lot nicer to have been able to see what we were doing while framing for the heater. To rectify this we installed three can lights. We marked the locations and then marred our beautiful ceiling by cutting three holes in the middle of it.

I gave my b-in-l a quick lesson in outlet wiring so I could go up into the attic space to wire the lights. He installed the J-boxes and began wiring the outlets in the room on his own.

I was able to get the wiring done before the outlet wiring was down so the b-in-l got to have a little light while working.

The lights are on a 3-way switch and line up with one of the solatubes and with the center of the French doors. We only sort of meant for things to all line up. In reality, it's really more of a happy accident.

To wrap up the work for the weekend, the b-in-l installed some plates over where the wiring passes through the studs.

Then we nailed down some underlayment to span the floor seams.

My mother commented that we should be using the b-in-law for more "tall" work before he goes back to MT. I agree and now feel a little foolish having had him do so much "low" work this last week end.

Hitting the ***** Ceiling

We really cranked this last weekend. By Sunday evening, we had all of the drywall installed on the ceiling. The den room is 10' by 12'. This is after we built the utility closet. The closet is what drove the dimensions because we have to put a washer and dryer in it. The 10' by 12' area is what was left over. We bought 4 sheets of 4' by 12' drywall. We would have liked to get 10' long drywall, but that size is apparently not readily available. We used 3 full sheets (minus the extra 2 feet) for the den ceiling and the last sheet for the closet ceiling.

Getting 12 foot long drywall sheets from the Home Depot to our house proved to be a difficult task. Our truck's bed is only 7 feet long. We had to buy three 2x4x10' boards to support the drywall sheets for the trip home. My spouse drove, the brother-in-law sat up front, and I sat in the extended cab of the truck. We'd strapped the drywall sheets into the truck bed as best we could, but I still stuck my arm out the back window to add a little extra push to keep the sheets in place. We drove pretty slowly, hit a few bumps, felt the drywall shift and tip a little, but we got home just fine. (That is if sweaty palms are just fine.)

The first couple of sheets went up pretty easily. That's mostly because there was no wall on the east side of the room.

The third sheet was a lot tougher. Bound in on three sides, and us not wanting to cut the drywall into smaller pieces, meant that we had to heave the heavy sheet into place incrementally.

The process of installing the big drywall sheets involved installing a 2x4 cleat on the wall to support one end of the drywall and using a 'deadman' to support the board on the other end. While the board was supported, we screwed it into the ceiling joists. Because it's the ceiling, we put screws in every 6 inches (we're just paranoid like that).

The closets were a lot easier because they were so much smaller.

During the drywall installation, my spouse commented that we looked like we were going to put on a puppet show.

And there was a little bit of peek-a-boo (practice for when the baby is born).

My spouse and brother-in-law noticed something funny at the end of the day. After smiling and laughing...

Apparently I had been using my head a little too much. The work had left its mark.

Chalk lines are great tools. And the marks wash off skin pretty easily. Here's a photo of the finished work!

Jacking the Floor

Our floors are uneven. We know that. When we reframed the ceiling, we saw that the wall between the den and the utility room was sagging about 5/8ths of an inch in the middle. The below photo shows the discrepancy between the new joist (under the paper) and the old joist.

Unfortunately (?) for our readers, we didn't take any photos under the house this time. It's hard enough getting under there in the first place and I'm usually not looking forward to it.

I jacked up two of the supports 3/4". I had a mild amount of apprehension during this process. I positioned myself parallel to the floor joists so that if the house came tumbling down, I wouldn't be severed in half (just crushed and smothered). While getting the last quarter inch of height, I could really hear the creaking and groaning of the house. I even heard something fall off the shelf in the room that was right above me.

In addition to the two locations that I raised 3/4", I was able raise four other supports about 1/2" each. When I checking the ceiling joist inside, it had only moved about 3/16". Oh, well. I guess the old wall is just too solidly built to move.

I was planning on chiseling out the part of the old 2x4 that hangs low, but it'll be hidden by drywall mud and crown molding so I'm not going to worry about it.

When my spouse came home from Pilates and later when my brother-in-law came back from MT, they couldn't see a difference in the floor. I swear it's better, though. The laser level doesn't lie.