So, today we were hoping to put up at least one of the final 3 pieces of plasterboard that make up the bottom two rows of our plasterboard ceiling in the lounge. That would be the end of the ceiling bits that we’d be lifting with our drywall lift – and then it’d be time to break out the rental lift.
But no, because our Arksen drywall lift has broken again. Now it’s just incredibly stiff to the point that we can’t lift it beyond about 8 feet with any load on it. I’m not sure if something bent, or if it’s just stiff because it has mating surfaces which are just bent metal against bent metal. At any rate, having loaded the drywall we got it to flat-ceiling height and could go no further. After several attempts to work out what was up we concluded that it’s b0rked and we can’t see where. I may try spraying some oil on it, but I suspect that it’s bent in a bit that you can’t easily get to without dismantling it, although I’m unclear how – or when – this happened. Also, I’m currently unclear whether it’s dismantleable without cutting welds. It’s hard to say when it broke because the last 3 pieces have been smaller bits that only went up to normal ceiling height on a flat ceiling, so it’s unclear what could have broken it.
So it looks like we need to rent the posh lift, which is all very well but for the fact that I’m away for a bit in January at CES and there’s Christmas – which makes renting the lift for four weeks (which is the cheapest way to rent it for the amount of time we’ll need it) impractical; or at least wasteful. Which means that we’re not going to get back to ceiling work until after Christmas. Which is distressing.
It’s not like there’s not lots to do. But we can’t get the 12′ sheets up without a functioning lift, which means we can only do a few bits of the walls that require 8′ sheets – which restricts our choice. And again, it’s not like there’s not lots to do. It’s not like this actually really slows us down (apart from the half day we’ve lost today) but it’s irritating to have our plans thrown. And it’s more irritating because this piece of kit has cost us in time and money (although at the moment we’re out $40, which is a lot less than it’d cost for us to rent a lift for as long as we’ve had this one).
Thankfully, today wasn’t a total washout. This morning was spent working on the radiator in the bathroom. We’re tapping into the underfloor circuit (at the manifold) to feed radiant towel warmers in both bathrooms. This will involve fun with adjusting valves to get a sensible rate of flow through both circuits, I suspect. At any rate, I cut the channels in the floor (through our underlay-layer of subfloor) and laid the pipe run to the 3/4 bathroom. Then I broke out the insulation and stuffed the wall with it. It’s not pretty because this wall was built 1′ on centre (rather than 16″ on centre), so I had to chop the insulation up to get it in (I could have cut one long run, but that ends up being very wasteful). You can see the pipe run on the floor there, too, with my high-tech solution to protect the pipes.
I’ve also started insulating the main bathroom, but I need to do the same trick of running some pipe in there, which means whacking some more screws in the floor before hand, and deciding on a pipe run. Fun, fun. Well, dusty, then itchy.
I keep having these thoughts about when we might actually get to move in. Sometimes it seems like it might be tolerably close. Sometimes it seems infinitely far away.
