The Art of Drywall

Goodness, it has been a while since I have posted an updated.  Not for a lack of activity but it seems the holidays just chewed us up and spit us into a new year of madness.  There has been a lot of progress and I'll need to spread updates into several posts, so check back often over the next few days.

I suppose it's best to start where we left off: DRYWALL

The drywall crew came and covered the studs within a few days.  Seams were taped & floated, and everything really looked great.  A few days later we returned to check things out and had a couple of surprises.  First, from the road we could see the exterior had been painted!  This was exciting because, as you know from this post, and this one, we were worked up about paint color (I'll save further comment on paint for the next post).  We walked toward the garage under the hypnotic trance of the glistening Eider White paint when we noticed the drywall had been textured.

Buzz. Kill.

I know this sounds ridiculous to some of you, but we were crystal clear to our builder that this home wasn't going to have "Monterrey" styled paint texture like 99% of the homes in our area.  It just doesn't fit the aesthetic of our home.  For the uninitiated, the drywall crew basically points a nozzle at the wall and throws globs of plaster onto perfectly normal drywall and gives it a texture like this:

Textured dry wall (old hand not included)

and this:

and this:

and Roberta looked like this:

Which begs the question - what happened to plain, smooth walls in homes?  Is this a central Texas phenomenon where everyone thinks they live in Tuscany?  Obviously, it is cheaper to produce.  You basically hang the drywall, conceal the seems and then blow this plaster snot over everything to camouflage dents and surface variation.

Anyway, we left the house a lot grumpier than we arrived.

Roberta immediately made it clear that we might sell the house if this wasn't corrected.  I'm kidding, of course, (not really) but it was a major impact to my quality of life.  I acknowledge this is a first-world problem and it is embarrassing to even write about it.  But when you are emotionally involved in a project like this, and it's your money, you tend to fuss over the things that are important to you.  So Roberta called the builder and hashed it out.  Long story short - they agreed to re-float every wall and ceiling in the house and the garage.

It took about a week for the crew to return to the site and get started but it is now done.  And let me tell you, that drywall crew hates us.  First off, it is not an easy house to drywall.  Most of the ceilings are sloped and in the 11-16 foot range.  It's a royal pain in the ass to touch these surfaces.  Second, in order to hang the drywall on the west wall they had to remove the temporary stairs.  So all access to the second floor was via ladder, and take it from me, it is not a fun trip up and down this ladder.  In general I am not afraid of heights but one round trip up that widow-maker had me questioning agnosticism.

You might be asking, "What happened to the stairs that were removed?  Why don't they re-attach them?"  And the answer is, the paint crew cut them up and built scaffolding to paint the exterior.  I think the drywall crew would like to fight the paint crew... similar to Celebrity Death Match.  Wouldn't that be an EXCELLENT HGTV show?  You heard it here first - contractors fighting with homeowners just like MMA fighting.

Not only that, the drywall crew applied 2 coats of plaster to every wall and sanded them to perfection.  And I truly mean perfect.  When we returned last week it was incredibly smooth.  I did not think this was even possible.  The floors are covered in 1/2" of plaster powder from sanding - it looks like a winter wonderland.  But the end result is fabulous and we are very happy.  Check this out!

Thank you drywall crew.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And by the way, you would totally kick the painters' ass in an MMA fight.