End of September Random Bits

 So September 2021 is nearly over. Drywallers are still mudding, it's in the 40s at night so it's taking time for mud to dry even with fans and heaters. So here are some random shots of what's going on. 

I'm standing where the fake wood stove will be. Kitchen on the left, front door and door to TV room in the back. It's nice, but weird seeing drywall after 4 years of construction. And very weird not to be doing it ourselves!

Drywall with mud

I've been looking at vinyl plank flooring, whenever I bring something home, Hal likes them all. I'm going to Alpen with his sister tomorrow to hopefully settle on a final choice. I could actually go with any of these.

like the left one, cheaper than the one next to it

Hal likes this one, too

And my flower garden is looking at little tattered. I've only been able to seed it occasionally. Next year I hope it will look better, I need to find another spot for all those Cosmos, they overwhelm everything.

I have to say the yellow marigolds in front really loved their location.

And getting back to the Palace, I've been frying to pick a paint color for the walls in the great room. The little green chip is the Clary Sage of half my kitchen cabinets. The white is probably my ceiling, the 2 beige/grays in the center are the possible wall colors. I know they look pretty much the same but in real life there are definite if subtle differences. Suffice to say, I like the lower one of the 3, it's called Dainty Lace by Behr.

the 3 choices for wall color

None of the other walls in my house are planned for this color, but you never know. I am thinking blue for the main bedroom Hal likes the idea of a green for the TV room, I'd like a yellow for the laundry room as it has no windows. Bathrooms and small bedrooms are up in the air. First thing I will do, of course will be to paint the ceiling. The drywall contractor is taking care of the primer.

One final note, the heating guy that came out to look at our place (can't remember if I mentioned it or not) actually sent a plan to Alpena Supply who got back to Hal today. I have no idea how much it's going to cost but finally someone is taking our heating problem seriously! Fingers crossed.

Almost forgot to mention, we hired the friend of our concrete guy for our ceiling insulation. He's going to do spray foam. Cheaper than the other guy I got a quote from. Stuff is happening!

Drywall!

 The drywallers started Monday. Today is Friday. They began in the garage and did the ceiling throughout the entire structure, by the end of  Tuesday the garage ceiling was done and they were starting on the mudroom between the house and garage.

garage ceiling

garage drywall up

mudroom

As of yesterday all the drywall is up.

the hallway to the guest bedrooms and bath

the kitchen

the living room as seen from the guest hallway

They did a pretty good job with all the little cutouts. Hal and I could only find one outlet that they missed in the master bedroom so I told them about it this morning and they took care of it. Today they are taping all the joints and putting up the corner bead for outside corners. Next week I guess they do all the finish work. It actually looks like a house now.

Preparing the Ceiling for Drywall

It's still a few months before drywall but today I started adding furring strips, 8 foot long 1"x3" spruce boards to the ceiling joists that the drywall will be screwed into. They are spaced 16" apart and there will be a lot of them. Figuring out how to hold them overhead and then holding the screw gun overhead wasn't fun. After a lot of aggravation, we clamped another board perpendicular to previous ones so the ones I was putting up were held on the far end. I just don't have the hand strength to hold the board up with one hand and also use the screw gun. I need both hands on the screw gun to push up hard enough to get the screws all the way in. I put 2 screws, #6 x 2" drywall screws into every joist. It took all afternoon to put up 9 furring strips. Now that I have a system, I hope it will go faster. 

In the meantime Hal was putting up 2x4s around the exterior perimeter at the ceiling for the drywall along the walls to be attached to. He'll be putting them along the floors when he's done.