Sheetrock Cleanup

Last Saturday (7/19), we spent the whole day loading sheetrock scraps into a trash trailer to be hauled away. I'll bet they've never seen a trailer so neatly packed as to fill every cubic centimeter of space! It was all fit together like a 3D puzzle so that I could pay only for a 15 yard trailer instead of springing for the 20 or 30. But in the end, all the trash is gone. It's nice to be able to see my front yard again!

This Saturday (7/26), we spent the day cleaning all the sheetrock dust and mud from the floors. We only got through about half the house in a full day, so that's turned into a real job! Each room was done in three passes. First, we swept up all the loose dust and debris. Then, we used shovels to scrape up hunks of mud and stuff that came up easily. Finally, we mopped up the rest.

The stuff dissolves easily in water. You just have to scrub a little bit. Some final spots required a scraper or a wet rag to get up. We had to stay away from the edges of the rooms with the water since we don't want to wet the sheetrock. So we left the edges to get later with a scraper or some other tool. The slowest part of this job is constantly rinsing the mop and changing out the mop water. Like I mentioned, we only did about half the house on Saturday. This evening, we'll start on the rest.

It's great to see clean floors again!

Spraying Texture Today

This morning, we went to the house to open it up for the guys spraying the texture on the walls and ceiling. I'm getting a very light orange peel done everywhere. Yes, I've heard people say that perfectly smooth walls are coming into style. But if there is any defect in a wall at all, it will stand out like a sore thumb on a flat painted surface. My walls have been done really well, but I just don't want to risk it. I think the light orange peel will look fine.

We also brought over the plywood doors we made. These will go up in place of my real front doors until I'm finally ready to hang them. I was going to hang them now, but multiple people recommended against it. We hung one side, and we'll do the other one this evening when we lock up.

I need to call around for information on a paint sprayer. That will make it easier to paint the primer all over the house...

There was a heavy rain for a while this morning. It's coming from the outskirts of Hurricane Dolly, which is making landfall in Texas today.

Prepping for Post-Sheetrock Work

You mean after all this, I still need to decide on colors for EVERYTHING in the house?! Wow! Another marathon of decisions are ahead.

The sheetrock finishing guys are moving right along. They tell me I could have texture on the walls by this Tuesday! Afterward, I'll be ready to paint walls, lay down tile, and all the other finishing stuff that comes afterward.

I've talked to two custom cabinet makers. One is coming to measure within the next 2 days, and the other lives over an hour away, in Hammond. He's looking at my plans and tentative cabinet layout before working up a ballpark figure for me. I've also contacted the interior trim & finishing guy that I want to use. I met him at the house today. His price for all the base and crown moulding, installing cabinets and doors, and all the trim like towel and toilet paper holders, etc., is $4795. That doesn't include moulding material. If I choose to do some of the work myself (like the cabinets, etc.), he'll take off for that portion. I know that this guy does good work with a lot of attention to detail.

As for colors, I'm starting to get input and advice from a few people. I have a few vague ideas about wall colors myself, but nothing definite. My pastor's wife is talented in this area. They're coming by tomorrow for her to take a look at my place and give me some ideas!

It's amazing to look at the house today and remember back to when it was a vacant lot. So much change! I'm heading into the home stretch now, even though I'm sure the remaining work will go the slowest. I enjoy painting, so I'm looking forward to that. I've never put down tile, but I've seen it done and read about it. My knees may not enjoy that work too much, but I'd like to save money and do that myself.

Garage Insulation Blown. Taping Sheetrock.

There's a lot more sheetrock scrap than I predicted. There are at least 4 piles of the stuff all around the yard. I'm planning to have a trash trailer or a dumpster brought to the site so we can load it up and they can haul it away. We've usually just brought trash to the dump ourselves. But there's enough of it here to make it worth the $175 - $285 for a container.



They have worked 2 half days at taping all the sheetrock. Today they start working whole days because their other job is finished up. Woody, the guy who seems to be the supervisor working with them, tells me that the end of today should be the half-way point in their work. So far, it looks good.






We finished blowing the insulation into the garage walls and attic at 10PM on Monday night. That ended a 4-day marathon of work on that project. I hope I never have to do that again!

Blowing in the attic was far easier than the walls. Just point and shoot! The walls took so much time attaching the netting and then having to hold the hose just-so. And there was so much starting and stopping for each stud bay.

I took yesterday evening off from working at the house. Except for closing up the place and meeting a friend of mine to talk about doing the finishing of the garage door arches, I didn't work over there.

Photos of Sheetrock in Progress

Sheetrock, Day 1

The guys showed up around 9:30 this morning. Their first task was to count and sort through all the sheets that were stacked. They found that many of them were cracked and busted. Basically, they said it looked like the beat up stock from the back of the yard. I called to have the supplier come out to look at it. They did, and the replacement stock should be there tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, they were able to get the top half of several rooms completed: the office, the front bedroom, the bathroom, and several closets. They finished up around 3:30 today because the lead guy was tired from an early morning and a day of traveling.

It was nice for me not to work at the house this evening. It was a relaxing one at home!

Tomorrow, I expect that they'll get more done since they're already setup and in motion. I'm assuming they'll be able to work a bit longer also. Photos to come soon!

Sheetrock Delivered

Delivery people rarely follow through with the phone call they promise before they show up. I woke up this morning to see on my phone that I missed a phone call. It was the driver with the sheetrock. He hadn't left the yard yet, and he was calling for directions (not necessarily to let me know he was coming). I told him the place was locked and I'd be over there in 15 mins. They beat us there. So had they not needed directions, it would have been more of a rush on my part to go over & let them in.

All I can say is: I now have a LOT of sheetrock!

There are three big stacks in the living room, two in the kitchen, and one in the garage. The green rock is next to one of the bathrooms. The truck they used has a boom arm on it. The arm lifts sheets off the truck and extends out to the front door. So the guys just take them off the arm and onto a dolly with wheels. Then they take them to the stacks in the house.

It'll be interesting to see where they start hanging the stuff and how they maneuver around the stacks.

One thing I noticed is that some sheets were scraped and gouged by the time they were put on the truck and handled by the crane arm. I assume they either don't use the gouged pieces or they can mud over the scars later on.

I left a voicemail with my sheetrock guy letting him know the material is on-site and that he'll need to call me to get in the house when they're ready to start... We'll see if they are another group that forgets to call first! :)

Late Night at the House

I worked with my mom & dad's help until 10:30 tonight! That's a record. My friend Ken was over earlier in the evening. He marked on the floor where each outlet was so the sheetrock guys can keep better track of them (and I can make sure I don't lose one without realizing it). Then he helped me run a couple of speaker wires.

Afterward, my dad and I finished straightening out bowed studs. If a stud is even at the top and bottom plates but it bows in into the room at the center, it could affect how the sheetrock job will come out. (Yes it's probably overkill, but I'm a perfectionist!). So we cut a diagonal slot into the stud on the side where it's bowed into a room. Then a screw is applied on the edge to close the gap that's been made. This usually makes it straight. In most cases, we also screwed a piece of 2x4 over the cut to strengthen the area.

Then it was back to running speaker wire. I tell ya, no matter how much you think to do, and how much you accomplish, it always seems there's something else lurking out there: another wire you could run, or something else you could accomplish in the attic before the sheetrocking happens, etc.

My mom helped outside with the pile of sand I have left over from the brick-laying. I'm keeping as much of it as practical because I'll need to lay more bricks for steps, and I may also put pavers down in the backyard. She filled buckets with it and we moved them to the back garage. She filled around 7 buckets and it's probably less than half the pile! I'm not sure how much sand is practical to store in buckets. I know I'll use some of that to fill in low spots in the yard. But I wanted to clear that pile enough so it's not in the way when they deliver the sheetrock tomorrow.

Post-Insulation, Pre-Sheetrock

The insulation is done. The sheetrock is scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday, with the hanging work starting on Wednesday. In the meantime, we've spent a lot of time cleaning the foam overspray out of the attic. The sand-like residue is everywhere! We scraped and swept everywhere on the flat deck up there. We also did a lot of scraping on the beams and supports, but there is more work to do if I want to get it completely clean.

We've also begun finding wall studs that are bowed and correcting them. This will make for walls that are more straight and level. I've also got to finish running speaker wire to a few rooms, and mark on the floor where all the outlets and switches are so that I can make sure none get accidentally covered by sheetrock.

My brick layer came back to hang the new address number. This time it's level and un-chipped. It looks good!

Copper Theft!

My bricklayers left on Thursday afternoon. I went over that night to pick up around the yard. Friday morning, my sheetrock guy went over to take care of the walls that will be soundproofed. On Saturday morning, my dad and I arrived to find that some of my copper had been stripped from the house!

They took the entire line of copper from the air handler in the attic to the unit in the backyard, and they got some plumbing pipe. Luckily, that's all. As far as plumbing, they took small pieces from the master bathroom and a good portion of the middle (guest) bathroom. In that room, they got all the copper out of the wall with the bathub faucet. They even broke one line off at the concrete slab...

I filed a police report (for all the good that will do). It's hard to tell whether it was kids, or one of my contractors or their workers, or just somebody looking for quick money to support a drug habit. They didn't take any tools, equipment, or other materials we had laying around. They didn't get to several copper lines that would have been easy to remove. They dropped a couple of pieces on the way out the front door, which may mean they left in a hurry.

So I spent Saturday boarding up the openings that have no doors in the front and installing my back door with a lock. One upside is that I can now say I have the keys to my new house! I also setup security lights inside. Of course, all anyone has to do to eliminate the light is unplug the extension cord from the temporary pole in the front yard, but it's something I guess. I also setup a battery-operated motion detector with a siren just inside the back door.

I would tend to think this was someone who had been keeping an eye on the place over time. They must have known that the brick-layers were packed and gone. And having the sheetrock providing new privacy from the street meant it was safer for them to work without being seen. Did they work in the middle of the night? If so, why did they seem to leave so suddenly? Why did they leave stuff that was so easy to get to? It makes me angry and stressed and also creeped out. Like someone is now watching me and my project without me knowing it.

The plumbers have already been there to replace all that was taken. They had to bust up the concrete where the line was broken at the slab. The HVAC guy has been by to assess his situation and plans to reinstall his line this week. And my electrician needs to look today at one line that they cut in order to get at the HVAC line.

And wouldn't you know that the electrical inspector FINALLY showed up this morning and couldn't get in because the place was locked up! I wonder how far that's going to set me back. He's supposed to try again tomorrow. Yeah, right.

All-in-all, I'm glad it wasn't much worse (Thank you, Lord!). It served as a wake-up call to get the place secured. The insurance company informs me it might not be worth my while to file a claim. I have a $2,000 deductible to begin with. If the replacement costs aren't much more than that, then filing a claim will cost me more in the long run because my insurance will go up. I'll lose my "no-claim" discount, and yada yada... Gee, I'm so glad I have insurance.


Here is the house with completed bricks after all the scaffolding was removed.



In this picture, you can see where they snapped off copper lines at the slab.



This is the master bath where they broke off small pieces.



Here, you can see the straps that used to hold the AC copper line.



And here are my first real walls of the house: the sheetrock is in place where they need to spray insulation on the other side.

Bye-Bye Brick Layers

They managed to finish the second gable on Wednesday, but they didn't start the acid wash as promised. When I called, he said they were waiting for all bricks to be done before starting the wash. So they did the wash on Thursday, along with taking down their scaffolding and hauling their tools & equipment away. That morning before they got there, I noticed a window in the front was cracked. This was the last area they worked.

I told the son about the broken window and the crooked and chipped address number. He said I'd need to wait until the dad got there to talk about the money stuff. After a couple of cycles of me coming & going and missing the dad, I finally caught up with him. I told him the window was going to cost $200 to replace and that I needed him to pay $90 for a replacement address block. He agreed to both. We settled up and I paid him everything I owed minus $200, which I will pay when he comes to install the replacement address block. His son wasn't too happy with me for wanting to withhold money, but $200 out of $13,000 is something he's just going to have to get over.

I also had to ask him about the acid wash he was doing. My mom and others had lead me to think they would get all spots of mortar off the bricks. So my expectations were higher than I was seeing. They were using an acid solution on a scrub brush with a long handle. It got the dust and maybe some mortar off, but there are still many spots. I expected they would scrub with a wire brush by hand. My friend Matt (my electrician) said what they were doing is all any of them do.

Boy, I hate the conflict parts of this job! When I pointed out to the son that the address block was chipped, he claimed they often come like that and the damage occurs during shipping. Umm, no. I had taken it out of the box and thouroughly examined it. So I had to contradict him. I don't like to essentially call people liars, but geez...

I'm thankful that his dad admitted it was not broken when they got it out of the box. Also, the son put up an argument about me withholding money. I said I would withhold $500. He had a strong reaction. I told him he was going to have to work with me here. There was still labor to do, and I needed some assurance that they'd be back to do it. He gave the usual arguments that they'd be right back to do it as soon as I called. (And maybe they would have.) But I still need some assurance. So we settled on the $200.

So the bricks are done and the scaffolding is gone! That leaves a lot of cleanup to do. There are bricks, mortar, and other debris everywhere. I had my friend Tim come over yesterday evening and help me gather all the broken bricks into a pile. It's a start!

My friend Matt is also working on the vinyl trim on the outside. They worked their fisrt full day on Thursday. He and his brother-in-law finshed underneath the patio and the eaves across the back and a ways up the sides. They're supposed to come back on Tuesday to continue.

I called the parish today about the electrical inspection since Matt can never get a straight answer from his local electrician boss. The boss claims he called in for the rough-in inspection, but the parish government says they haven't gotten a call. So someone's either screwing around with me, or they're incompetent, or both. It's been about three weeks and I'm getting tired of this run-around. I need to move past the elctrical inspection to the framing inspection so I can get the insulation. I have calls in to Matt asking him to get to the bottom of it.

Also today, the sheetrock guy went over to put up the rock where I am going to sound-proof. I haven't been over there today to see how it looks. I'll pass by tonight when I go get the two columns I'm going to need for the back patio.

The columns are a bit of their own story. My plans call for three 6-inch wooden or fiberglass columns. I want fiberglass, and all the local stores carry is 8-inch columns. That's fine. And my friends tell me that I don't need three of them. That one will do, but I might want to put two. The framer agrees. But I'm sure the parish will balk at that because it's different than what's on the plans. So to head that problem off, I'm getting the engineer who did my wind load certificate to write me another letter with his stamp that approves of the change.

Well, that's my brain dump for today. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! :) More pictures to come soon.