muddy mudskipper

Guess how I spent my Saturday? Trowlin' drywall mud, that's how. I've done very little of this kind of thing before and in case you were wondering, it's superf&*@in' tedious. And messy too. I used the pre-mixed compound (recommended for neophytes), and it comes in a very heavy box with the actual compound in a plastic bag. I'm not sure how one is supposed to get it from the bag to the tray, but I used a putty knife, and getting it all over your hands every time is pretty much unavoidable. It's sort of like when they scoop ice cream out of those big buckets at Baskin-Robbins, but less cold and gets all over your hands. Thank goodness my place has a big utility sink ten steps away in the laundry room.

Anyway, I have no exciting tales of near-death-by-electrocution or any other almost-tragic occurences. I did remove a couple of the new drywall pieces to add some shims in order to help level the seams before I started; it's sort of tricky to get everything perfectly level when you're adding to existing drywall. I guess this is a good argument for completely tearing everything out and replacing it all, but that would've been a nightmarishly huge undertaking. My hair hurts contemplating the prospect of buying/moving that much drywall, as well as the massive amount of old drywall I'd have to deal with. I think this will come out pretty nice, and truthfully, a great deal of the walls will be obscured by cabinets anyway (my favorite Pink Floyd record: "Obscured By Cabinets"). I added new corner pieces for the window and compounded those guys too- you have to use a lot. Realized too late that you're supposed cut them at angles so they're flush against each other, but I think I can just mud over the corners in such a way that it won't be noticeable. Oops.

Only thing I haven't mudded yet is the ceiling, which I'll attack tomorrow. Other than the obvious additional complication of its upside-downness, it shouldn't be too bad; we didn't do that much new drywall up there. It'll probably be a couple of stages of boring-as-hell sanding, applying more mud, etc. I expect this to go on for a couple days at least. I also expect to suck back a couple of pounds of dryed-compound dust, so all those of years of non-smokin' heathy lungs are pretty much being erridicated. Cough.

I still haven't made any solid decisions about lighting up there, so for the time being I'm leaving the fluorescents and messy holes in the middle of the ceiling. I'm definitely doing recessed lights, but I think I'm gonna wait until I install the cabinets and island so I can have the best three-dimensional idea of exactly where and how many to do. I intend to have an electrician do it, not only because of prior mentioned electro-spark fests, but moreso because the install's gonna entail crawling around in the attic and me no wanna do that.