Thursday, December 14, 2006

Drywall corners are a royal pain!


Eric and I spent a few hours at the new homestead last night. Each of us started on an opposite end of the wall dividing the guest bedroom from the weird middle/BLUE room. Between the old closet (see photo of me "attacking makeshift shelving with zeal") and the short wall, there were at least four of those god-awful metal corner pieces to be removed. They make something so simple as a foot-wide stretch of wall take an hour to clear. You've gotta pry off the metal strip from the nails that are attached every six inches OR knock out enough drywall underneath that you can pry off the nails. There's about twenty of these for each side on the corner. Many a profane word slips as this task is undertaken. Eric has a completely different method from my methodical nail removal system. He beats the crap out of the metal strip with our mini-sledgehammer. We have come to love this tool so much that we have given it it's own name, "Thor!" After two hours of nail-stripping and drywall ripping I was ready for some instant gratification. I took Thor to the two-by-four framing in the back bedroom and over the yellow tile fireplace/closet to another dimension. (See photo "not a fireplace") A couple whacks to the vertical boards toe-nailed into the floor frame and they'd splinter. Some contorting yoga moves later they could be removed from the top frame as well. In 15 minutes I had both frames knocked out and got to hurl the beams into the growing pile of debris in the back yard. There's nothing like a two-by-four javelin to perk one up from the nasty metal corner strip removal. We get a dumpster delivered on Friday, which is a good thing, because I'm afraid we're bringing the block down with our growing pile of panelling, drywall, metal strips and two-by-fours. Thank goodness Bry and Suz stopped by to check out our progress and tear us away for dinner. A couple of Barley's ales were a welcome reward for our labors!

No comments: