A Drywalling We Will Go

We finally made it to Payson on Sunday, December 26.  Our plans were to be up there on Christmas Eve, but Mike had been down with a cold for almost a week and still was not feeling 100%.  By Sunday he was feeling better and we needed to be up at the house by Monday to take our drywall delivery.

We got a call fairly early on Monday that our drywall was on its way.  The Home Depot delivery truck dumped 60 sheets of 1/2 inch drywall in our front yard, but for some reason did not have the sheets we needed for the kitchen ceiling.  I called Home Depot and discovered that the 8 pieces of 5/8" drywall had been incorrectly tagged as a customer pickup so the delivery guy had to go pick it up and bring it back.  We then spent the next couple of hours carrying the very heavy 12' sheets into the house.  Just recovering from a cold, this took a lot out of Mike and we did not accomplish any more work that day.

Lots of drywall to get into the house

With Matt home from college, we wanted to take advantage of his help and get as much drywall up as possible.  Using the drywall lift lent to us by my dad, we decided to tackle the kitchen ceiling first. This was our first time doing drywall and tackling a ceiling with cutouts (9 can lights and a ceiling fan box) presented a good challenge.  Our friends Doug and Ursi had given us a tip (which Mike had also seen on the internet) on covering the outlets and cutouts with lipstick and then pressing the drywall against the wall to mark where the cuts should be made.  Sounded like a good idea and looked good on YouTube, but the lipstick did not always make a full mark, plus it was really hard to get off.  However, we did get enough to get a good idea of where the cut should be made and did not have to do many re-cuts.  Mike used his Dremel tool that has a special drywall cutting blade and Matt stood by with the shop vac to keep from spreading too much dust as Mike cut.  The cutting went much better than the marking and the lift really helped us to support the drywall while measuring and cutting, then to hold the drywall in place while securing it.  Mike had decided long ago to use regular cordless drills with a special adjustable dimple bit (much cheaper than a special drywall driver).  With a few tests on some scrap pieces, we were able to get them adjusted properly and they worked very well.  Mike and Matt were a little nervous about going too deep, so a few screws had to be finished by hand, but once they got into a rhythm, most of the screws did not need adjusting.  We were able to finish all but two small sections of the ceiling before calling it quits for the day.  Mike and I woke up the next morning and, while Matt was sleeping in (surprise, surprise), finished the last couple of small pieces.

Dremel cuts clean holes

Matt helps to keep the dust to a minimum

Drywall lift made a big difference

Matt's impression of a lift

Next we decided to do the exterior walls, starting with the ones in the kitchen.  We found that marking the outlets while hanging the drywall on the walls was much more difficult than doing the ceiling.  We found it easier to measure, re-measure (very important step), mark, re-check marks (second most important step) and then cut the outlet holes.  As with the ceiling, we had to do very few modifications using this process.  In the whole drywall process, we found that our three most important tools were a drywall cutter that cuts both sides of the drywall at the same time, the Dremel for cutting holes and a newly purchased Craftsman multi-tool for trimming.  These tools surely made our life a lot easier.  We were able to complete the three exterior walls of the kitchen/dining room in two days of work.  We took one more day to do the front wall of the great room and the den.  We did not have too much trouble with weird angles and cuts in the kitchen, but had to make some very interesting cuts in the great room/den walls because, as expected, the walls are not square.  We decided not to come back to the house until the weather gets warmer, so we did not cut out the window openings so that people can't look in and see how empty the house is.

Great drywall cutting tool from Amazon

The lift did wonders on the walls too

Trimming some uneven boards

Front wall done, but window covered

The big news of the week was the large amount of snow Payson and the surrounding areas got starting on Wednesday.  It was a lot more than we had after Thanksgiving and we knew it would not be gone later that day.  It snowed most of Wednesday and part of Thursday.  Before the snow accumulated too much on Wednesday, Mike and I drove into town to buy some chains and an ice scraper for the car at WalMart.  We were not sure if we would need the chains, but did not want to be without them in case the weather continued to get worse.  We did not attempt to go on the roads again until Friday and by then we were barricaded in our driveway by the snow plow castoffs.  Mike had to use a regular shovel to dig a path out.  The roads were snow packed, but easy to drive on.  We picked up a few things in town and then decided to play hooky from house work and go to a movie and dinner.  The three of us saw Tron Legacy at the local cinema and enjoyed it, even though it was not in 3D.  We were going to take Matt to the airport diner for their regular Friday fish fry, but had noticed that El Rancho, the Mexican food restaurant we like so well, also offered an all you can eat fish fry and we decided to try it.  I did not think a fish fry at a Mexican place would be good, but both Mike and Matt really liked it.  In fact, Mike liked it better than the airport diner.

Zena covered in snow

Just the beginning, it got worse

We went back to the house and found things to occupy our time until midnight arrived.  Some of our friends are staying on the East Coast for a year and they decided to spend New Years at Times Square, so we texted them to see how it was going.  We have no TV service in Payson, so we could not watch the ball drop as our friends did in New York, but we celebrated just the same when midnight came.  Since Matt turned 9, we have not exchanged Christmas gifts in our family as we wanted Christmas to be centered on Christ's birth so we now exchange New Year's gifts (this actually works out really well for after Christmas sales).  Once midnight struck, we opened our gifts then went to bed.

Zena's New Year's snuggly

Matt made us a plaque for the house

That night did not just bring us a new year, it also brought us extreme temperatures.  In the morning we found that the overnight low was -0.8.  Our friends in New York had been wearing sweatshirts to the Times Square events and here in Payson it was below zero!  I decided to make the guys a nice New Year's Day breakfast and found that there was no water coming out of the hot side of the kitchen faucet. Mike discovered that the hot water line for the kitchen sink ran closer to the opening to the crawlspace than the cold line and, apparently, the water inside it had frozen overnight.  He spent time after breakfast wrapping insulation around both of the exposed lines running under the kitchen and enclosing those areas with insulation.  The water finally started running by the time he was done.  We do have plans to completely insulate the crawlspace, but there was not enough time before winter kicked in.  Another item to add to the summer projects.

Some other miscellaneous items we got accomplished this week included putting up the ceiling fan in the kitchen after the drywall was up, cleaning out the gutters in the front that were blocked with ice due to drain blockage and putting down some de-ice on the patios.  We also bought a wicker table on clearance and a cute little living Christmas tree that we decorated.  Our plan is to buy a new pine tree every year and then plant it so we have a memento of every year we've been in the house.

Our temporary kitchen table from Home Depot

Our living Christmas Tree to be planted in the Spring

Stats:  3 Home Depot trips; 4 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 12/6-1/3: $1544
Remodeling expense to date: $25,827