Sheetrock!

The sheetrock is all up and taped and textured. There are two different crews that do the sheetrock. The first set of guys put all the sheetrock up, and they are fast. They did the whole house in three days, including all the little closets and nooks. I never quite figured out the rhyme or reason behind using both screws and nails, but they were really efficient. They did all the ceilings first, and then worked down from the top. Two guys would lift up the sheetrock and nail it in and then the third guy would come along behind and add screws all around. They had this neat little router thing that just zipped out all the holes for the lights and the electrical outlets. In the picture above you can see all the drywall up in the main room.

Once they were done, the tapers came. They had a neat tool that had a reservoir for the mud and a tape roll on the top. They would just put the tape on and coat it with mud at the same time. The second guy would come along after him with a knife and smooth it all out. When they were doing the texture, they rolled the mud on with a roller and another guy followed along and smoothed it out with a knife. The walls look really nice with the mud on them. You can see the walls in the picture below. They still need to come back and sand everything.



The cabinets will be done tomorrow and should be delivered by the end of the week. They will start installing them by the end of next week. The stucco guys are coming tomorrow to put the scratch coat on, and I can't wait to see how it looks. I'll take a picture and put it up as soon as they are done.

Happy Father's Day, Jake

The guys who put up the sheetrock (who are different from the guys that mud and tape the sheetrock) are here, and we want them to put up new sheetrock in the middle bedroom (Molly's bedroom). The contractors wanted about $1000 to demo the room, plus more money to add one new receptacle and do the insulation. Being cheap, Jake and I spent the entire weekend, including Father's Day, taking out all the plaster and lathe on the walls and ceiling, rewiring the entire room, including a new box for ceiling light and 4 new ceiling cans (since it is so dark in there) and putting in insulation. It was a long weekend, but Molly's room is going to be awesome now, with all new wiring and new sheetrock. In the top picture you can see the walls we demoed, including the closet, which will eventually be part of the bathroom. In the bottom picture you can see one of the new can lights we put in. We finished just in time -- the sheetrock guys started the ceiling today.

Low Voltage Guy

Jake has been spending every available minute over the last two weeks running low voltage throughout the house. He has been running orange smurf tube everywhere, so that we can have a central location for all the low voltage stuff. Our friend Bruce, who did the same thing (on a larger scale) in his remodeled house helped Jake lay out the plan, lent him his awesome Hole Hawg, the must have tool for drilling large holes through thick sections of wood, and spent some time helping him drill and run the tubing. Jake has also been running speaker wire everywhere, even in the new master bathroom, so that we can have in wall speakers and some great music in the house.



We decided to put the central low voltage location on a shelf above the stairs going down to the basement. It is centrally located with a drop ceiling, making it a good choice to hold all the electronics. In the picture right above, you can see all the smurf tube terminating above the stairs. Those runs go to the TV wall in the family room, the desk in the master hallway, the master bedroom and the pantry. We also ran a line to Molly's new closet, just in case. There is also a tube to get low voltage out to the casita.

As for the speakers and tv, Jake spent time putting in blocking for the tv and blocked out some of the stud bays to provide the right size holes for the speakers. In the top picture, you can see Jake cutting studs to make the hole for the center channel over the tv. Don't worry about the wall -- the whole section is supported by a huge header!