Gosh, I’ve been quiet.

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I guess the frantic pace of building has kept me away from the computer (ha). Actually, we went to Portland for a weekend (there’s a post over there, in the Drafts pile, which I need to write about it. It was fun), then we have continued on with what is definitely progress, if not enormously rapid progress.

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We have more or less finished the drywalling. The porch-hall wall and associate cupboard bit is lacking any kind of drywall – because our new front door is waiting to go in first. But other than that, and a little bit of attic space, we’re finished. We’ve even done the (bits of the) main attic (that we were planning to do).

So now it’s taping and mudding.

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Taping…
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…and mudding

Which is progressing fairly much apace.

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We still have the skylights to do in the main living space, and both bedrooms to do, (and one strip where the pitched ceiling meets the wall at the end of the dining room, oh and some corners in the pantry), but that’s trundling along fairly rapidly. Aided by the fact that despite proclaiming on the pack that it’s workable for 80 minutes (Ha*), the 90 minute joint compound is actually workable for maybe 30 minutes.

Which certainly lends a certain degree of urgency to proceedings once it’s mixed. Still my dad’s plasterer’s trowel is getting a fairly hefty work out (screw this drywall tools nonsense).

Which leads us to wall coverings.

See, we’d planned to use Murco M-100. It’s really a joint compound / texture, but a friend tells us that you can use it to make a smooth-finish plaster replacement. It was, until fairly recently, available from a place called Green Depot in Seattle. Which has closed. Tracking down anywhere that can even get it from the far-away land of Cal-i-forn-i-ahhhh has proven to be an unnecessarily tedious challenge.

And it seems that it’s one of those things where you have to ask the special person who knows.

Because having called a billion drywall supply places working my way spiralling outward, I ended up calling Murco themselves, who suggested a company who deny any knowledge of Murco. Then after several more abject failures, I called Murco again, and got hold of the right person, who gave us a place locally that will order it. But only after I explained to them that they had previously ordered it, and perhaps they could find the specific person who ordered it last time who might know how to order it again.

It turns out they can order it… and they will sell it to us…

At 3 times the price it was at Green Depot.

Plus shipping from California.

Feh.

Which has led us back to the circle of pain which is searching the internet for something that we like, can afford, and which isn’t super complex to put up. The nice thing about Murco was it could go up pretty rapidly and, we hoped, possibly in one coat. Many other things require you to prime the drywall first (ugh), or require multiple coats, or indeed both, or cost many thousands of dollars up front.

We’re also kind of stuffed by our location. No-where around us would sell us the kind of drywall you’re meant to use for veneer plaster (which is what we wanted to use), and so now we’re limited in what we can put on it. Feh.

Kathryn has suggested a plan so we can at least keep making forward progress, which is that I can start work on the underfloor heating pipe guides. Ironically, now we’ve spent some time in the place I’m really regretting the decisions we made early on about heating. While I’m looking forward to having a heated floor, it’s beyond overkill for the place. We’ve insulated it so well that it’s actually warm enough with the three radiators we have in the house. We’d still have needed some kind of water heater, but given the size of the house we could probably have had a in-ceiling ductless heater and a small tankless electric heater. Or even a few tankless heaters (one for each bathroom and one for the kitchen). BUT, since we’ve paid for the hot-water radiant floor heating kit – and it would probably cost more now to switch – but I have distinct guilt about putting in natural gas heating at this point in history.

If only they’d start using biodigester methane for our local gas supply.

Anyway, more joint compound tomorrow, and then onto the bathrooms where it’s thinset on the joints. Whee.

*HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA**

** HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA AAAAAAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Dies.

KateWE

Kate's allegedly a human (although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise). She's definitely not a vampire, despite what some other people claim. She's also mostly built out of spite and overcoming oppositional-sexism, racism, and other random bullshit. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, she's here to reassure that it's all fine.