Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Drywall: it begins.

I put up the first piece of drywall on my furring strips, and it looks like it's going to work out alright. It occurred to me how much more comfortable I would be using free 1" reclaimed boards. First of all, you can take boards on and off without ruining them - which might prove useful for future re-wiring and other "behind the scenes" work. Second, it wouldn't be so critical to know exactly where the studs are. The board itself could be used as a strong enough anchor for almost anything I can think of.

BUT. I already bought six sheets of 5/8" drywall, so that's what I'm using. It does make me wish that I went and got loads of those old free 1"x6"x10" fence boards that were on Craigslist a couple months ago. As an added bonus, I wouldn't need the furring strips with those either. And I'd save some money, possibly making a feed-through jobsite planer a reasonable purchase.

Running the free boards through the planer a couple times would make them look even and awesome. It's a missed opportunity. The major drawback was thinking of a place to keep the boards in the interim - I'm already storing stuff all over, and it's hard to think about where to make yet another mess in my parents' house or property. So the boards would be great, but I need to wrap the project up and start the process of de-cluttering my folks' place from top to bottom.

First piece of drywall. First I've ever hung. I had to cut it 'cause it's too heavy to lift up there alone.

I had to add these furring strips, because I forgot to include "nailers" in the framing. I needed to add something to anchor the drywall to. Not too excited about adding the extra step...