We put up some drywall this weekend. (I mean, if you don't work on your house during labor day weekend, when are you going to work on your house?) Just one wall - four sheets of 4' x 8' drywall.
Our den, when we purchased the house, was walled with rather shoddy-looking wood panelling. The room had originally been a garage, and converted into a den at some point, and it looked it. Given its length (almost twenty feet) and the fact that it had only one overhead fixture and natural light only came in through the ends of the room, it was dark and rather depressing.
So, we decided to pull off the panelling and replace it with drywall. (Which is called "drywall" because it's the main alternative to plaster, which goes on wet.) We also decided to poke a pass-through (an internal window) through to the dining room, to improve the airflow, and to build floor-to-ceiling shelves on the outer wall.
Well, we changed our minds about the drywall on three of the walls - the wood panelling was in fine shape, it was just ugly - and instead spackled in the long grooves and painted the panelling white. Which has worked fine. The fourth wall, the one we were going to poke a pass-through into, we pulled off the panelling as planned.
And found concrete block. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the wall between the former garage and the rest of the house is actually a load-bearing external-type concrete block wall. For about eight more hours, we debated poking the hole into it anyway, but neither of us were remotely comfortable poking a hole into a load-bearing concrete block wall, so we nixed it.
But we did go ahead with the drywall. (Not that the wall needs it for, say, insulation, or for fire resistance.) The original furring strips were in good shape, so we left them, only pulling out one that had at some time a decade or so ago sustained wood-eating insect damage. So this weekend, we replaced that, and put up four nice big drywall panels.
For those who haven't worked with drywall, it poses a number of problems. It comes in large, thin sheets, which threaten to snap frequently. It's tricky to poke holes into, which you must do in order to install electrical outlets and such things. And it's fairly heavy, which is a bad combination with also being somewhat fragile.
Anyhow, we succeeded fairly well, for our first outing. We got both electrical outlets cut correctly and the outlets wired back on, as well as the two cable outlets and the thermostat wire poked through in the right places. The drywall fit snugly in place, so we'd cut it to size well. Screwing it into the furring strips ("Furring strips" are long strips of wood, in this case three-quarters inch thick by two and a half inches wide by almost eight feet long, that you attach to the concrete wall, so that you have something to then attach the drywall to. Why they are called "furring strips" I will leave as an exercise for the reader.) turned out to be a pain in the ass - we borrowed from a friend a drywall screwdriver; unlike other power screwdrivers, it really doesn't allow for speed control. You squeeze the trigger and push that bastard forward. Going slowly isn't really feasible - and if you try, the damn thing spins out and may damage your drywall.
But we got that done. And the drywall is all fairly level, so taping it shouldn't be too difficult. ("Taping" it means not only running tape over the joints but then applying spackle-like drywall compound to the joints, screwholes, and anything else not already smooth, thereby making the wall smooth.) Then there's sanding, and then painting.
And painting we've already done, so we know what we're doing. There's just something about experience that renders one so much more comfortable with one's competence. I feel better about installing drywall already, for instance.
At such point as I do it again, though, I'll be sure not to install two of the panels backwards. (Drywall comes with an against-the-wall side and a facing-the-room-side. Who knew? It comes in packs of two, with the facing-the-room-sides on the inside, facing each other. The only difference, luckily for us, is that the against-the-wall side has all the printing, and since it is on the outside of the package it picks up any scuffing. As we're going to be priming and painting over it, the ultimate ramifications are no worse than some embarrassment if anyone sees it before then.)
So. Drywalling, painting, some electrical wiring, some cable wiring. Before too long, we get to build shelves. And then we're taking a wall out of the kitchen, which will involve moving gas lines.
Thank God for long weekends.
- Sun Ra