We wanted to rent a nicer lift – because our lift doesn’t reach the heady heights of the peak of our ceiling. And so we looked at the local rental place that claimed that they had one. And then I called them. And it turns out they don’t.
They don’t think anyone else local has one either – although apparently some places have the same shoddy lift we have with the extender. Given that isn’t really an improvement, we forked out for the 18″ extension for ours. That is a frankly terrifying almost certainly badly welded object consisting of a pipe with a bit of metal rod sticking out of it. I’m assuming. It’s not arrived yet.
Of course, the problem with this is that it means that we have to raise the 12′ sheets of drywall up an extra 18″ to get them onto the lift. Which means, I suspect, a fun game involving a step stool and a giant heavy sheet of drywall. Fortunately, I think that we only have 5 sheets to do.
While we’re waiting we’ve been doing the bodgy bit – making the altered-pitch bit at the peak of the ceiling that covers for the fact that we didn’t manage to get the top-plates at the top of the wall perfectly aligned all the way along. I sometimes wonder if we should have done them differently, but I’ve absolutely no idea how we could have got it better. At any rate, we think we’ve come up with a method which should allow for the flexibility of cathedral ceilings, keeps the ceiling looking right, and doesn’t lose too much height. I also think we have just got enough of the x-crack (which is the stuff we use for the joins between the changes in angle sections of the ceiling, because you’re meant to use something that allows a little movement).
We have also ordered some super-duper-posh corner stuff for the corners of the wall, which I think is made by the same company.
And after Kathryn cut the 4″ strips of 3/4″ ply to go around the edges of the wall, I’ve been working my way around the edge of the house laying that and trying to work out pipe-routing around some of the more complex bits. Most of it was done for us, but there’s some quirks to our heating-system-manufacturer supplied PEX plan… like it going through walls. And there’s also some changes we made – like not having the heating under the bath (because the bath had to go in before the heating), and changing the cupboard layout by the front door…
All of which means it’s not exactly a straight transfer from their map onto the floor, and there’s quite a lot of concentrating and staring at things to work out where the pipes will run. I’ve done the space where we’ll have a bench and the cupboard next to the front door – both of which were very fiddly bits. There’s the two bathrooms to do next, but we don’t have any more 3/4″ ply.
In other news, the place we were going to get our wall finish material… has closed… both of its West Coast operations. So we’ll have to find a different dealer – but it’s a shame because our friend recommended it as a good resource for eco-friendly building materials.
But in good news, we managed to score bathroom wall tile for ~$1/sq foot. I’m sure, like last time I used B&Q cheap tile, it’ll be a nightmare to install. But pulling random ones out of the box, they looked fairly square and uniform. And I’m much more used to tiling than I was back then, so hopeeeefully, it should be okay. It’s nothing exciting, just white subway-stile 3″x6″ rectangles. Not the really nice bevelled ones. Just plain. But they look okay…
We just need to get to the point where we can put them up.
