The drywall contractor started work on Tuesday. I went up Tuesday morning to point out a few places they needed to leave wiring exposed (bathroom floor heat thermostat wires, garage door opener wires, and wiring for under-cabinet lights in the kitchen). I thought they might start in the garage, but they were working in our bedroom.

As you can see, they put the drywall in right over the top of the windows. They come back later with little router-type tools to cut the excess away. They have hidden the top part of the window where we have equal-leg arches. Framing around those was one of the things I wanted to do before they started, but now I think I’m going to have to frame and trim them out later. I have some ideas about how to do it. It will be interesting to see how well the ideas translate into reality.

Here’s Leah standing in the door to the bathroom.

She said the bedroom looked smaller with drywall up. I think that’s to be expected. I have noticed that the appearance of a house bounces back and forth between small and large, depending on the state of construction (or which pill you have taken).

We finally picked out hardwood. It’s going to be a fairly dark, reddish, cherry-stained oak. We worried about getting the floors too dark. Neighbor John and his wife used very dark flooring for their new house down Wildlife Trail from us. We didn’t want it quite that dark. I think it will work out. We also found some wood-look tile that matches the flooring very well. We’ll use that in the kitchen and the bathrooms. I’ll probably buy the the tile in the next few days, since I can store it in our current garage. I’ll have to wait on the hardwood until we have a working heating/air conditioning system in the new house, since hardwood needs to acclimate to its future environment.

The drywall contractor estimated it will take a week or so to finish. I’ll call the tile installer in the next few days to let him know when the drywall should be finished, and then we’ll have to hurry to paint before he starts. He’s a pretty busy guy, so we may not have to hurry that much. I hope he knows a good hardwood floor installer. I also have to contact the electrician. Once the drywall is all in, the electrician can hook up some outlets to the breaker panel. Then the power company can install our meter and hook us up to power. Then the HVAC contractor can finish up his work, and we’ll have a cool house.

Then all we need to do is work on our own coolness.

The drywall installer called on Monday and asked if he could have drywall delivered Tuesday. Of course I said of course, even though the house was too messy for them to deliver. They distribute drywall throughout the house so the installer doesn’t have to move it so far, so the floors need to be clear of construction material and debris. That meant I spent the rest of the day Monday and the morning on Tuesday clearing lumber from the garage and various insulation-related stuff from the house.

Here’s the first load going into the garage.

The truck has a long boom that picks up a stack of drywall and swings it around right to the door.

Neither the delivery guys nor the installers like to lug drywall up stairs, so they try to unload directly into each level of a house. Our floor is three steps up from the garage, so they used a bedroom window.

Our windows are double-hung, and made so that each sash comes completely out.

We (or the drywall people) are lucky I wanted deep windows in our bedroom. If you look at the closer window below, you can probably tell that it isn’t tall enough to unload drywall through. Our bedroom window is just tall enough.

The drywall just fits. Here is one of the delivery guys taking a few sheets into the bedroom.

At the extreme right of the photo you can see a little of the flexible silver duct the heating and AC contractor installed Monday. It will be used to blow warm air from the wood-burning stove in the living room to our bedroom.

I spent the rest of the day Tuesday building a small chase to hide that duct. In addition to that, I need to insulate a few more stud bays and put up my attic insulation measuring sticks. I cut about 80 20-inch long pieces of 2×4 to nail to the ceiling joists as depth indicators. I ripped them on my table saw at home right after lunch. During that process I did not cut off any body parts, but I did stick my left index finger into the spinning blade. It bled (not as much as I expected, being on a daily aspirin). I hurried inside, a little afraid to wash it and see how much damage I did. It chewed out a small bit of flesh and a little of the tip of the nail. It doesn’t hurt to speak of, which suggests to me that it got just enough of the tip of the finger to destroy the nerve endings. I think I’ll end up with a little scar there. And, of course, I’m finding out just how many times you use the letters f, g, t, r, c, and v when you type.

The delivery guys distributed the drywall to various places in the house, ready for the installer to start work. I expected to be ready for him by the weekend, but now I think it will probably be Thursday before I call him.

The building inspector came back for a re-inspection on Tuesday. We passed.

He basically took my word for everything that wasn’t easily visible, like the framing repairs. He had noted several plumbing issues, which I told him had been corrected. He suggested that we add some metal tie straps to the side framing of the garage doors, to help prevent the garage from blowing away in a strong wind (assuming we had left the garage doors open, which we won’t). We needed four angle brackets specially designed for that purpose at a cost of $20 each. That’s a lot for metal brackets, but not so much in the context of a cost of the whole house.

I bought the brackets and spent an hour and a half drilling holes in the concrete pad of the garage, installing concrete anchors and bolts, and hammering 25 nails into each bracket.

The inspector said we can start drywalling. The drywall contractor said he can start pretty much when I call. Several things have to be done first. I have to complete the insulation, which I think I can do in a couple of days, or one if I’m really diligent. On second thought, make that two days. The heating and air-conditioning contractor is going to install a duct we’ll use to blow warm air from the wood-burning stove back into our bedroom. That should happen this week. The chimney man will install all the wood stove fittings from the ceiling through the cap on the chimney. That should happen early next week. I want to install a walkway in the attic that will give us access to the whole-house fan and the warm-air blower when the attic insulation is done. That should happen by the end of the weekend.

And then drywall. And then paint. And then electricity. And then the heating/air conditioning contractor can complete the HVAC system. That will allow us to condition the air in the house, which will allow our wood flooring to get used to the conditions that it will experience when we move in. And then wood floors in the living room, hall, and bedrooms, and maybe kitchen. And tile in the bathrooms, and maybe the kitchen. There are several things that may have lead times of several weeks, so we need to pick them out now and possibly order them within a week or so. That includes wood flooring, bathroom vanities, and possibly some light fixtures.

And, of course, I have to finish up the basement in our current house, hopefully before the end of May.

We need to get busy.