So that went superbly

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On Wednesday as the sun cleared away the morning mizzle our Bob lorry turned up with a boatload of fire rated 5/8″ thick plasterboard. I had tried to order the ultralight variant, but it turns out that is not carried by any of our local Bobs. So instead we got the standard variety. Each of these is about 50kg and local planning requires our entire ceiling is done in fire rated boards.

It turned out for an extra $20 they’d deliver inside (fools!); but it also turned out that neither of the people seemed to actually have much experience of moving drywall and needed to be reminded that you can’t carry a sheet of 12ft drywall flat and unsupported, and the whole process was startlingly fraught. Still, apart from the corners of a few sheets, it all made it in to the house in one piece.

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So then we set to on putting up one sheet in the one and only area we had the stuff to put up. See, we have special clips and crack reducing strips that are required for the cathedral ceiling, which, despite my frantic ordering late last week did not arrive in time. But the hall had the advantage that it’s much lower…and doesn’t require any specialist stuff…

… So, we thought we’d just try doing one, just so we could learn a bit about the process, and so we could feel like we are making progress on getting to moving in. See, the other task that’s actually more urgent is to paint the soffit, and for that we need decent weather. But despite the sun having cleared the sky we thought we’d put up one sheet of drywall.

To say it didn’t go well is an understatement.

The first error we made is forgetting just how unsquare our house is. No, actually the first error was accidentally picking what, it turns out, is the most complex piece of the entire ceiling. Then we forgot how insanely unsquare the house is. So the first sheet didn’t fit and we eventually managed to break the edge of it trying to work out how much we needed to trim and shave. We remeasured, and eventually recut a fresh sheet which with some manoeuvring we got into place. Started screwing in place… And then heard unpleasantness.

Cracking unpleasantness.

I’m not sure why yet, but the corner of the sheet cracked, and having taken a solid 4 hours to get one sheet into place, we were both pretty much done for the day.

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We have a couple more ‘extras’ so hopefully once we have had some experience on some other sheets we can come back and replace it. And the clips (which save us adding in some extra framing and theoretically reduce the risk of cracks at the corners of the rooms) and the metal strip (which hopefully makes up for our slightly dodgy framing at the top of the 4m wall and reduces the propensity of that cathedral ceiling to crack) have now arrived and are sat in a large heavy heap in our apartment – so we can at least start on a fairly sane bit.

But that will more or less have to wait until we’ve painted the soffits, because the weather looks ripe for soffit painting.

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It feels like no progress, but I have to remind myself it’s really important.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.