Yeah, yeah. I know. First it was endless whinging about us drywalling the ceiling, now it’s a Lord of the Rings trilogy length treatise on the nature of drywalling walls. But it’s actually kind of exciting for us. While you could imagine the spaces when it was framed, and more so as the insulation went in (more of that still to go in, btw), the drywall going up makes actual walls.
Non-see-through walls.
And the transformation is rapid.
Which is handy, because I was in a bit of a mizzog mood this morning, having woken up with a headache. This is not hugely uncommon when I’m a little (or more than a little) stressed, because if I wake up in the ~couple of hours before I’m due to get up, then go back to sleep, I’ll almost invariably get a headache. It’s okay if I wake up enough to remember to drink a load of water, but if I just roll over, curse the fact I’m awake, and go back to sleep it’s a fairly reliable headache inducer.
No, I don’t know why. It might be entirely psychosomatic, but it also tends not to really respond to pain killers.
Sometimes it’ll go away, sometimes it’ll just drift to a background thing, but sometimes it’ll just last out the day. And as lunch rolled around it was still a cracker, and was making me feel less than thrilled. I’d spent the morning poking at the shimming in the office (so that when Kathryn’s free tomorrow we can do the big wall and the corridor wall). There’s still some to do where you need to be a bit higher up, but for the most part that’s ready.
Then I poked at the dining room wall framing in the same way.
And as I broke for lunch I contemplated that I might not want to carry on, and might want to come back to the apartment, dim the lights, and feel sorry for myself. But I needled myself enough with thoughts of “if every time you have a headache, or feel tired, you stop, this will never get done”. And eventually prodded myself enough to conclude that I would try and get this one board up.
It’s not a particularly easy board, and there was a hilarious (this may be a new use of the word hilarious you’re not aware of) moment when I’d finally got the board up and it was resting on the board below it, where I realised that I’d left the screwdriver (and the screws) just about a meter away from me. Juuuust out of reach.
Of course, if I let go of the board it slowly cambered away from the wall. And I had nothing to hold it there with. Oh, and it’s excitingly near our french doors, that was fun too.
Thankfully, the step-stool acted as a hook so I could drag it towards me (note to self, plan better), rather than as I thought I’d have to, me taking it down again. Which would have made me quite sad. Because they’re quite heavy.
At some point in the process the headache got bored and wandered off, which made me happier. And the other thing that made me happier is that more and more, it’s starting to feel like a house.
Like a place we might actually live some day.
It’s deceptive, because the floor is not in, and that is a non-trivial job involving a lot of labour. Because labour is cheaper (theoretically at least) than expensive poured floors. And the floor also requires quite a lot of planning to get the pipes in… despite us notionally having paid for a pipe plan. Nor is the boiler in, or any of the plumbing fittings…
But it’s definitely more house like. And that is very positive.
Aaand there’s more potentially positive.
We’ve been talking to a custom kitchen builder, and it was looking like we might have to settle for less than we’d hoped, despite the tinyness of our kitchen. Just trying to hit that sweet spot of “this costs us money that the house isn’t really worth” and “but we want it to be decent quality that will last” and “we want something we like” was tricky – but it turns out that they have some cabinets that were…made for someone…in error? Or from a material they don’t like? It’s unclear exactly, but they happen to be some of what we wanted, which they’re willing to sell us at a discount and then make up the rest of the kitchen.
So we’ll go check that out tomorrow.
We’re still waiting on the quote for the garage. Finally got the quote back for a surveyor to map our site – which is insanely expensive, but we don’t want the garage or the fence sitting in the wrong place… That is a ‘feh’ situation. Apparently they can’t just come out and mark the corners, they also have to draw a map and submit stuff to the county. Since this is the first company that’s actually come back with a quote, I’m inclined to end up accepting it.
