Dull Drywall
Post date: Aug 18, 2015 3:14:22 AM
Putting up drywall is not very exciting. And I skipped out for several hours today. We narrowed the choice of interior wood stains to probably two. Jacques will test these stains on a couple of out-of-view places on the five wood interior doors stored in the garage to see how the wood and stain work together. The wood has both white and red areas, so this is a challenge.
Then Sybille discovered that the bathroom wall tile that we selected was only available in two dye lots and, even so, not enough. And the floor tile had been discontinued. So we went in search of different tiles for the bathroom. I think we succeeded. There is even sufficient stock available!
We also checked the available colors of satin finish snap-on electric wall plates for both bath (light aqua to go with the tile) and the rest of the house (biscuit — one of a zillion off-whites).
The electrician came by. He will connect a power outlet up in the mechanical room. That will make it easier to rebuild the wall that the mechanical contractor took apart to install the big vent and also allow him to test the furnace and ERV. Of course we need to drywall that room, and the electricity will help there, too. I showed him the LED strips and power supplies I got from China that he will install above bookcases.
I didn’t help drywall (well, except to hold up one panel). But I did vacuum out the many holes (eight in the bedroom ceiling alone for electric boxes plus ventilation ducts) and caulk those same boxes. I may have mentioned this previously, but my house has double-wall construction. The outer wall is pretty airtight, except for penetrations by electric boxes, water hydrants, windows and doors, and vents for water heaters, etc. So we try to make the inner wall airtight by caulking around the many electric junction boxes. This works pretty well, if we also seal where the wire comes into those junction boxes, which we can do with foam. We also caulk between the wall and the floor and the wall and the ceiling.
I also have lots of little spot lights in the ceiling, and each requires a junction box. Except that these boxes have a number of holes in them. They are steel, and can be fastened on four sides or the bottom, meaning many holes. So caulking around them does little good if we don’t also foam all these holes plus where the wire(s) enter the box.
I’m not convinced that all this detail work will help, but I’d rather do it myself than pay the carpenters to do this when they are better employed at their primary skills and work I cannot do well. Of course, for every junction box that pokes a hole in the drywall there is a small piece of cut-out drywall and lots of gypsum dust. So I clean, too — another task I’d rather not pay carpenters to do.
I did miss my siesta today — we were chasing down paint colors, stain colors, and tile for the bathroom. But I managed not to fall asleep early this evening. I can’t figure out my sleep pattern — if it is a pattern.