That girl can drywall…

… but not without a lot of swearing.

Just like gravity is a law of Physics, the fact that one project will always lead to another is a law of DIY. Always.

Which is why I was supposed to spend Saturday laying the last section of stick tiles, but instead found myself staring at this:

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When the half-bath was added to the basement, they did not use drywall for the walls. I’m not sure if drywall even existed at that time, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this occurred in the same era in which it was common to patch holes in the wall with scotch tape.

Oh, wait. That was never. Musta just been the idiot previous owners then.

Anyway, the 1/4″ composite board or whatever-it-is was obviously not holding up real well, and I spent some time (at 8 AM Saturday) just looking at it deciding whether or not this was the appropriate time to tear this shit down. MysteryMan saw me checking out the trim around the bathroom door as he left and said “What are you thinking about, now?” Because it has only taken him a year to figure out what that glint in my eye means. And besides. I had two perfectly good sheets of drywall (bought specifically for this purpose three years ago) standing five feet away from me.

Which is how I ended up spending an hour and a half on Saturday morning standing on a bucket of kitty litter doing this:

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Since holes were drilled and the new plumbing was set through the cheap ass plywood walls, and there was not enough room to get a decent saw or really any cutting utensil up there. That’s a jewelers saw that I’m using by the way. With a blade that is meant to cut wax. It was not a fun experience.

This is the end result of about 2 hours of very frustrating work.
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Then of course I had to cut the drywall, and because the washer and dryer were moved out into the work space… this is how much area I had to cut a 4’x8′ piece.

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Yeah. That’s it. Which is why when I was trying to cut it down to the right width, I came up with this ingenious idea.

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I was having serious issues holding the straightedge on a vertical piece of drywall and cutting at the same time. So in the interest of not cutting off a finger, I decided to bang some finish nails in to hold up the straight edge while I cut. Worked beautifully.

What did not work beautifully was attaching that shit to the wall. The fact that I don’t have an additional 50 to 100 lbs of weight with which to leverage screws into pretty much anything has been a huge problem of mine. Also a huge problem of mine is getting really effing pissed about that fact before considering that maybe I need to adjust the tools I’m working with… a fact MysteryMan kindly pointed out to me when I was banging my head against the wall later that day. He lent me a bit that worked much better with the drywall screws and at least let me get them far enough into the studs that the drywall can be patched properly.

After that fun little escapade it took until Monday night for me to get the floor finished. However, there is considerable improvement between this:

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And this:

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CONFESSION:
I have done the same thing twice to MysteryMan so far on the basement project… once with the refrigerator, and once with the washer and dryer. Basically I make pouty faces at him and ask him to move some heavy object that I don’t feel like dealing with because after all I am a girl, therefore small weak and helpless… no? Then three days later when he isn’t around I somehow manage to move these things around to their proper places without, you know, a problem.

After he sees that I have done this, I always get a narrowed-eyed look from the man, which could possibly mean one of three things:
1.) Why did you make me do that at 8 am if you were perfectly capable of doing it yourself?
2.) Why did you bother the neighbor to come over here and help you move that because I seriously doubt you did it by yourself regardless of what you say and/or write on your website?
3.) Why did you do that by yourself, you could have pulled a muscle, ruined the floor, and/or killed yourself? You are lucky I am here to look after you now.

I don’t know why I do this to him other than because he is a boy, and I thought for sure one of the reasons they exist (other than opening pickle jars) is to move heavy objects when girls don’t want to. This is obviously a sexist point of view, and I’m going to make an effort to stop using both of my X-chromosomes to get out of heavy lifting… sometime in the next decade.

10 Responses

  1. LOL! Isn’t it so true that you can always find more projects while you are working on one. 🙂 The drywall looks great though, well done! I like doing the mud part of drywalling, but hope to never have to hang it again on a ceiling.

  2. Hey! I distinctly see a pile of laundry in the first photo that isn’t there in the second. Did you *gasp* actually do some laundry ?? Or is it just hiding, undone, in the washer?? * snicker*

    I totally understand the “glint in the eye” remark. I too suffer from it on a regular basis, with the same reaction from SD. lol Once a friend threatened to buy a bunch of random crap from Home Depot , pile it up in my yard and invite a bunch of other friends over to sit around, drink beer, and watch what I did with it…LOL

  3. Funnily enough, I spent about a day looking for that exact pile of laundry (which is clean, by the way) after MysteryMan moved the washer and dryer. 3 days later I found it inside the dryer. Because obviously the only appropriate place to put already-washed laundry is where I would have put it in this situation… back inside the laundry chute! lol

  4. You crack me up. I’ll have to send you a picture of my pile of laundry. Yesterday it sent me a note threatening to run away from home on its own steam.

  5. good job girl? i am trying to get my girl freind to hang this shiiii i mean this lovly drywall

  6. OK, I’m just an ordinary old Australian Bloke, but whenever I read some of your “Experiences”, it makes me smile a helluva lot. You Rock, girl!! Keep it up please! (When you have no more to do at your home, you can always come down here – I’ll find some more for you).

  7. Awesome sight, you inspire me to go get ’em.

    I have an old 1930 cottage and need to seriously triage the aching walls which are currently orange peel and chipped, dented, etc… I like your post on using joint compound.

    Does joint compound chip easily?
    Does it need to be sealed with a primer before painting?
    If I screw up, can I just spray it down with water and scrape the wall?

    Thanks!

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