I had just put in a load of laundry and gone back to work at my desk. The silence disturbed me. Is the washing machine working? I got up to check. It was working fine. I didn’t hear it because we now have walls. Real walls! The whole shebang. Siding. Tarpaper. Sheathing. Insulation. Drywall.
Before: June 5, 2006
After: July 25, 2006
Monday morning (7/24) the drywall guy showed up. He was scheduled for the previous Friday but got behind on another job. Scheduling people is much more difficult than I anticipated. Generally there is about a week of time to get into their schedule. Then they show up, work a couple of hours, and move on to some other job. So I’m never sure when they will be finished and I can’t schedule the next person. When they do finish, I have a week of down time waiting for the next contractor. In some cases, coming back multiple times makes sense. For instance in taping and floating the drywall there has to be time between coats for it to dry. Other times it doesn’t. Monday some supplies were forgotten so the drywaller couldn’t finish one wall. And so he was off to another job.
Tuesday he is back and gets the drywall up (an amazing feat for a lone person) and does an initial tape and float. Wednesday he comes back with an assistant to finish the job.
I’m not particulary happy with the quality of the finish work. However, the big part that I couldn’t do myself is satisfactory so I will attempt to fix the detail work that I’m picky about myself. I don’t think I’m very good at plaster work and I’d hoped that someone who did it for a living would make the kitchen look spiffy and new. The ceiling still looks shabbily patched. Paint will only hide so much, I think.
Having walls makes the space look huge. AJM is making progress on the floor too. He leveled two more sections of floor this weekend. The best part is that the room now bears no resemblance to our original kitchen. When I could still see the studs, I could still tell what was. Now I’m looking at the space with completely new eyes.
Congratulations on achieving a barrier between your interior and the Austin summer! I’m generally okay with our longer, narrow kitchen, but when seeing either your square room or my my daughter’s 1906 square, old kitchen, there’s something about the shape that seems so much more ‘right’ for the heart of the house.
Thanks for letting us see the project.