Sound the bells of celebration! More than four years after moving into my new house, I finally have every single gaping hole in the wall filled and every missing piece of baseboard and trim completed! This is huge progress! The last piece went in upstairs in the little room at the top of the stairs between the bed and bathrooms. I had left this open as a possible access panel to underneath the bathtub on the other side of the wall, in case I needed to add a supplemental heater to keep the bathwater warm in my six-foot bathtub. It turned out that I didn’t need the heater, but I never got around to fixing the hole.
Until a few weeks ago. My dad rightfully thought I needed to learn another home construction skill—drywall—so we used this as a training project. We removed the OSB panel that had been “temporarily” screwed into place over the hole.
Dad cut the drywall to size and screwed it in, then did the first couple of coats of mud. I picked up from there with the finish work, sanding, smoothing with a wet sponge, and trying to feather the edge of the mud gracefully into the existing wall.
I didn’t do the most awesome of jobs, but I just had to move on. We nailed in the base trim, then I was back to caulking, filling, sanding and painting. Just last night I got the final coat of paint on, and I am calling this project complete. Yea!
Last week’s post detailed the 10 inches of snow we got last Saturday. In the intervening week, we got a little storm that brought a measly four or so inches on Tuesday night. And then Friday it started snowing and, just like in December, it just. didn’t. stop. For two days. Only this time around we had the pleasure of losing power for the past two days. Umm…nothing like inside winter camping to send visions of seed packets and swimming pools through my head. I have no way of measuring the total accumulation this time around, what with the remnants of two storms still on the ground. But here’s a good way to tell—arriving at my house this afternoon I went to walk into the field to take a photo and foundered into snow that came over my knees. And I am not short. The photo above pretty much sums up the story of the ten-mile drive up to the house on Sunday to plow out the driveway for the drywall crew.
Last week was also a bit of a bust in the house department as well. We’re already well off of the projected completion schedule handed out just weeks ago. Plus I found a major problem with the framing in the master bedroom. Well, I should say we knew it was there all along as the framers did such a crappy job on that gable, but we were assured that it would all be solved with drywall. Right. Well, not surprisingly, drywall went on and not only did the corners of the gable not line up, the horizontal edge was four inches off level. A hasty diatribe went out to my builder via e-mail, and now it’s in his court to fix. Stay tuned.
In so many ways this winter—and building this house—feels like one step forward, two steps back. Make a bit of progress, only to have to fight yet another quality control battle. Get something seemingly squared away, only to have the quicksand shift again under foot and back to the drawing board. It’s like shoveling snow for two days straight only to have another storm wipe out all the effect of the effort. And do I even need to mention it’s snowing again tonight? For those keeping score at home, that’s four storms—two with 10+ inches of accumulation—in the past ten days. I think we’re all a bit worn out.
