workweek day 1

Saturday, June 5 - in one week the new tenant moves in, so this is almost the equivalent of my freshman workweek when I spent a week renovating. part of me welcomes the excitement of finishing a project at breakneck speed with a deadline looming. i welcome the tiredness and dirtiness. the only thing that bothers me is that we always used to cut corners as deadlines comes closer, and i can feel that as time runs down i might find ways to make things work easily again.

i went to the beach and on the way was a lowes, so it was a good time to buy some spackle and start the drywall finishing process. the walls are almost all up, though there are always small pieces, like inside the closet and the rest of the chimney that i always forget still needs patching.

the other thing that takes forever is actually screwing in the drywall. when you put each piece up, you put in like 6 screws to keep it in place and move on to the next portion. later when all the pieces are up you realize you have about 200 screws to put in and you've forgotten where the studs are. furthermore, for the connecting walls that are double paned, we use the long 3" screws, which get harder and harder to drill into the studs so i first drill a lead hole. switching between the drill bit and screw bit is a pain.

here's the glory of the back wall, complete with all its panes. i started spackling a little because i just couldn't wait. the bottom layer has the seams in the gap between two studs, so hopefully no one will lean on it. the top layer has two pieces (because i was running out of drywall so i had to use the piece on the right) sharing a stud, so the screws are really close to the edge of both the drywall and the stud. sketchy operation all around, but it'll be ok once it's all covered and out of sight.



also notice the gap in the ceiling and the bottom layer. those are all small gaps compared to other corners. so spackling comes next, and we have a ton of mesh and paper tape to cover up those holes and hide my mistakes.



at the end of day, here are the photos so you get an idea of the before and after. here is the back wall again, with most of the gaps filled. it makes a world of difference.





and at the end of the day a lot of gaps and nails have been spackled, and the room is beginning to look like it has real walls.