We don’t have good “before” pictures of these areas, but the hallway ceiling, in particular, was in horrible shape. There had been some exposed pipes run to the upstairs sink, and the corner where they had penetrated the ceiling was a big, gaping hole. A long-ago leak had turned much of the lathe and plaster black, and most of the ceiling was cracked. Going over the whole thing with a smooth sheet of drywall has made such a difference…

Drywalled family room

Hallway ceiling remade

We have long questioned how far we wanted to go on this back bedroom, which was formerly Chloe’s room and is now destined to become our family room. The plaster is cracked in quite a few places, although to some extent that’s been mitigated by the multiple layers of wallpaper. On our ambitious days, we’ve talked about stripping off the wallpaper and repairing the plaster. In our more lazy moments, we’ve contemplated doing nothing and just moving a couch our TV into the room. But, as we’ve gotten really tired of shuffling things around our house as projects move from one area to the next, we did commit to not “temporarily” start using this room, a phrase that for us usually equates to at least two years before we fix it up.

Our compromise in this case was to remove all the trim, so that we can have someone (not us!) come in and install 1/4″ drywall over all the walls. While the plaster purists out there will be appalled, we just don’t have the time or patience right now to strip off all the wallpaper and fix up the plaster. I spent about 3 hours removing all the trim today as the first phase of this project, and tomorrow I’m going to call to get a quote on the drywall work. The salvageable trim will go to Houck’s for stripping, and we will install new base trim. One of the previous renters had a dog that did an amazing amount of damage to the base trim, so it was shot. We will probably take the picture rail to the Rebuilding Center, because I’d rather go with crown, and there is no other picture rail in the entire house. Anyway, once get the walls “restored,” we’ll refinish our stripped trim and replace the trim that wasn’t salvageable. And between getting a quote and actually getting the drywall up, I am going to rough in some wiring for the TV. Our goal is to have this room finished by the time Stephanie starts teaching again in late September.

And just now Stephanie asked me while cutting some vegetables in the kitchen whether “the final nail was in the coffin?” on the patio door idea. That was something we had tossed around for awhile…”wouldn’t it be nice if we replaced the back window with a door out the the patio?” This idea has long been stretched between our desire to streamline our projects and our bad habit of coming up with bright ideas. Keep posted to see which philosophy wins…

Wow, this looks different… even though the rooms will be full of color by the time we’re through, the stark white walls of drywall primer are an exciting milestone. The formerly dull, dark rooms are full of light, even with just a camera flash. The drywall is looking really good – we’ve only been able to find a few problem spots, all of which can be easily corrected. The funny thing is that I had nearly finished priming Chloe’s room before noticing that her recessed light was no longer there, or more correctly, was neatly covered up by the drywall. One of the hangers forgot

to cut the hole, and now it is nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, the pictures from before are only giving me a general idea of where it is, so we will probably have to resort to a magnet or fancier stud sensor. I’m going to let the contractor worry about it, so that I don’t go cutting random holes in the drywall. The ceiling looks better in real life than in the photos – I think the lines that are showing are from the drying primer.

We have really been happy with our drywall contractor, Rueben Cortez. Not only have his guys done a great job, he has not asked us for one cent. He said he’d come back for a final walk through after the priming, and if it looks good, we can pay him then. If not, they’ll fix it first. It’s surprising to see someone in this day and age that will do something like this. I think it really speaks volumes about how good of a job he delivers.

Here’s what it looks like now, and we’ll get more pictures up after the priming…

One of the guys showed up for a bit on Saturday, and there were a couple here today. There’s hardly any point in showing new pictures, but at least they’re more interesting (maybe) than reading “it looks about the same as it did a couple of days ago.” At the very least, it makes us feel like more progress is being made. The funny thing about that is that tomorrow will only be the two week mark from when the project started. Yes, it could have gone faster if they were dedicated to it every day, but so what?? I just have to think of where we’d be without the drywallers. Hmmm…let me think about that for a second…oh yeah, we’d be nowhere! If (and that’s a big if) I could have talked a friend into helping, we might actually have the drywall physically sitting in the upstairs by now. Maybe. Maybe there’d even be a few pieces hung, but I am absolutely confident that not a single piece of tape would have been pressed into mud. Not one. Because we can’t afford to hire out many of our projects, we need to make sure we relish this as long as possible and never forget how sucky it is to hang, tape and mud over 80 sheets of drywall in a crazy upstairs that probably allows no more than 4 or 5 of them to go up without cutting! Now that I’m feeling good, let’s get back to the pictures… Every joint has been taped now, and many have 2 or 3 coats of mud now. It shouldn’t be too long before sanding starts, and we’re still optimistic about getting to paint this weekend. But if we’re forced to take another weekend off, then I guess we’ll have to

Today they went from the lone taper to a crew of four. As you’d imagine, things are really starting to look better. Almost every joint has tape now, and the closets now have tape and mud in them. Also, the couple of problem areas I identified have been rehung, so we’re pretty happy. A few more days of mudding and sanding should finish things up!

Main room:

Chloe checking out her (future) baby sister’s room, and the view looking back towards the main room:

In the main room, looking through the hall towards Chloe’s room.  The new bathroom is on the right: