I think I have probably sanded an entire sheet worth of drywall dust!

I have been making slow and steady progress on the walls.  About half of them are finished and have been primed.  The other half is just in need of some final coating around corners and sanding.  I also need to texture the rec room ceiling.

Speaking of texturing, I had initially planned on texturing the the walls but I am now making them smooth. After some experimentation I decided to forgo texturing because I don't think I would be able to make a consistent and even look.  Since this will be on the walls and not hidden on the ceiling I was very worried that I would hate the texture once the paint was on the walls.  I knew I could make a smooth wall (activate obsessive perfectionist power) but it would just take additional time.  So I decided to trade time for  a finish I knew would not bother me in the future.

There are no pictures of the basement in this post because nothing has really changed (that you can see in a picture) so here is a picture of a cute puppy instead.

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My arm hurts

Over the last few days I have attacked the basement with drywall mud.  I have gone through 1.5 - 60 lbs pails and 2 - 50lbs bags and I am about 75% done, not counting texturing.  The office, and hall have two coats and the rec room is about 90% done with the first coat.  I haven't even touched the bathroom yet.  On a side not, there are WAY too many corners in the basement!

By they way, it turns out that one should examine laminate flooring on clearance extra carefully.  I looked at the flooring we got a few months ago and discovered that instead of having 8 separate patterns of wood planks, this system only had two.  In a long hallway that would not even begin to look random, so we had to return those.  My theory is that this type of flooring had one pattern per box and since it was on clearance they were down to what was on hand which happened to be overwhelmingly of one type of pattern.  Or maybe the guy that loaded it was just a jackass and didn't notice he was grabbing all of the same pattern.

Dust everywhere

Since he last posting we have finished hanging all the drywall.  I also got the shower enclosure finished (sans tile). see below.

Pouring the thinset for a base for the pan to better level it:

 Here is the pan with drain installed:

Here is the enclosure with a layer of plastic and the shelf framed in:

And the final product.  The cementboard is up for the tile and the fan is installed and vented to the outside.

I have also finished all the prep work for the taping and mudding.  I have gone through and check the screws, cut out broken board and pre-filled large gaps, holes and very uneven joints.

Long time no see

Well, a full schedule, a cold and some unwanted snow meant for a very slow last couple of weeks.  I didn't even get downstairs once all of last week.  I did get down there this weekend and even got some unexpected help.  Together, the wife and I got all the drywall hung except for the shower stall area and started putting on some corner bead..  The goal for the end of this week is to have the basement taped and ready for priming.

Painting the ceiling: Redux

After some internet research I decided on a new paint sprayer.  If you will allow me a little corporate shilling, I chose a Wagner "Paint Crew".  Yes, that is the same brand as the handheld sprayer I recently threw away but after much research I learned that the problems I experienced with that model is pretty typical for that level of sprayer regardless of brand.  It turns out that those handheld sprayer  are only worth it for infrequent, small jobs.  So I chose a more robust, professional style sprayer:

This was definitely the right choice.  I took 2.5 gallons to spray the black on the ceiling and it took longer to clean the sprayer up than it did to actually spray the ceiling.  There was never dripping or spattering.  It worked exactly as one would expect a paint sprayer to work.  So now the ceiling is done(I have a picture lower in the blog)

On a side note, I tore down a drywall panel above the stair and found a surprise peeking out at me:

By the time I had taken the entire panel down I had hit the jackpot:

Free baby toys...Yay!!!

At one point there was a hole in the wall in the kitchen and this must have been the previous owner's kid's stash spot until is was covered up and the toys were lost to history.

Yesterday I got the office insulated and drywalled.  On the second picture you can see the finished ceiling.

On another side note, I hate the CFL flood lights I bought for the recessed lighting.  When you first turn them on they are at about 20% of total brightness and take close to 3 minutes to get to full brightness. Something that is totally unacceptable in my opinion.  I will be returning these and looking for a different brand.

Painting the ceiling

Things are looking really good.  Got the the okay from the building inspector on all the rough in work.   Heres the proof:

Today I decided to tackle the ceiling painting job since that is the last step before drywalling everything.  I got everything prepped and hooked-up my Wagner airless sprayer and began spraying the primer.  

Here is the before:

Here is the after:

You: " So how did the Wagner airless sprayer work for you, would you recommend it?"

Me: "They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look at this:

"Any questions?"

All the...small things

I am soooo close to drywalling everything...sortof.  There are so many little things that are just adding up and seem to be taking forever. "Give me some examples" you say.  Well, here you go.

I needed to put at least on directly wired smoke alarm in the basement on a separate circuit.  The easy choice would be to just wire a new circuit to the basement alarm, I did not choose that option.  I thought it would be nice to connect the smoke alarm on the top floor with the one in the basement so if one goes off the other will too, alerting all floors in the house.  Well that required new cable to the upstairs smoke alarm since the builder did not plan for connecting multiple smoke alarms.

A whole in the wall to run the cable to the attic: (yes you read that right, I needed to go back into the attic yesterday:(

I also needed to anchor the plumbing to prepare it for drywall:

In addition to those little things I also finished running the electrical today and framing in the office door.