Bathroom Walls: part 3

This week we finished taping the walls. Today we sanded them and primed them. Our blue-sky box is looking more and more like a room we might use :D.


Post-sanding


After priming




The entertainment station! (ipod touch + beer ;o)

Bathroom Walls: part 2

Today/tonight we finished hanging the blue board and did the first round of taping (durabond... fun). Our blue box looks kind of like sky/clouds now..

Bathroom Walls: part 1

Between yesterday afternoon and today we managed to get the majority of the drywall/cement board put up in the basement bathroom. The rest of it will have to wait until we stick down the shower pan.




Our neighbor left his handy drywall square. It makes cutting easier, and is also good for mapping out where the studs are.







Soon to be shower.



The outside of the bathroom. This is the only finished part of the basement so it is a bit amusing to have a big blue box in the middle of a messy concrete and brick basement.

White powder coated hell

Not much to blog about at the moment. After our neighbor did the first round of mudding with durabond 90 he showed us how to do the rest of the taping. We finished taping Tuesday and are currently in the middle of sanding. Our living and dining room (and to a lesser extent the rest of our house) are covered in a fine white powder. On the bright side it's cleaner than plaster dust.. but still unpleasant enough to get us working on it non-stop to bring this phase of the reno to a close.

Walls...

look like this...
Our neighbor came through for us and started taping this weekend. The living room and dining room are nearly done their first coat of taping (they'd probably be done but because of a water main break we are without running water which means no taping :\).

Long weekend!

All in all the weekend was good for us. We finished up our drywalling with 1 day to spare. In total we hung 37 9x4 sheets of drywall. It was *alot* of work.

While we were removing trim around the big window in our living room we found a window weight (above right). Kind of an amusing artifact to find while renovating.

To celebrate finishing the drywall we took today off and went to High Park. Compared to Calgary, Toronto sure is colorful in fall!

It takes a village to renovate a house...

We have the greatest neighbors... ever.

While loading our 25 sheets of dry wall into our house some of our neighbors came by to say hello and lend their sympathies (renovation seems to be a neighborhood past time). One of our neighbors is a contractor and he mentioned he might come by and give us a hand with the drywall today. Well.. to our surprise he rounded up a crew of guys from the street to come help us hang drywall. He also brought many fun tools that made the job *alot* easier (laser level, t-square).

Being so far away from home and family we've been feeling a bit out on our own with this house thing so far. To know that there are so many people close by willing to lend a hand really helped our morale. Having a friendly contractor to bail us out when we get over our heads is also very comforting.

Plaster vs drywall...

Deciding between plaster and drywall is a decision owners of old homes often have to make. The Internet has proven to be a valuable source of information on the subject (1, 2, etc).

The three main contenders are to:
1. save the plaster: neater/tider than gutting, more challenging when things behind the walls need modifications (e.g., electric, plumbing, insulating)
2. remove the plaster + replace with drywall: dirty and hard to live through, makes replacing mechanicals/insulation easier
3. cover plaster with drywall: cleaner than 2, allows holes for mechanical work to be covered up, makes for thicker walls

Before moving into our house we had noble intentions spurred on by way too many nights watching HGTV. We were going to gut it all and replace it all with drywall. Upon moving in we realized that the logistics of living in a house while gutting all of the living space would not quite work with one of us working from home and the other trying to do grad school. We also realized that the plaster did have some nice side effects (noise deadening!).

Saving all the plaster wasn't really a possibility though. The living room had some pretty dodgy DIY patch jobs and we need to replace the electrical which makes saving the plaster more challenging. Our current plan is to drywall over the plaster in the living/dining rooms (we'll post pictures of the electrical holes eventually), gut the kitchen and bath (eventually) and save the plaster in the bedrooms (ie. attempt to repair the plaster holes from electric ourselves).

One thing we realized when cutting the holes for the electrical that we didn't realize when looking at the whole plaster vs. drywall debate is the sheer amount of waste generated by removing plaster and lathe. Given the costs of removing waste in Toronto we realize now, how expensive our original "gut everything" approach would have been. We also realize that in our case removing the plaster isn't required to "do it right". We can put in new electrical by cutting holes and blow in insulation using a blown in insulation product. In the rooms where moisture is an issue we will be removing the plaster and in some cased replacing it with cement board/green board, but for dryer rooms (e.g., living/dining) this just doesn't make sense for us.

Well... this is the plan for now that seems to work for us. We'll see how it unfolds as things progress.