Day 268 - To the window. To the WALL

Walls. I has them. Sort of.

When I last left you, we had just gotten the dryer to vent outside. Then I was taken over by the urge to wash the pile of clothes that had accumulated everywhere in the house. This project took a whole week. And there is another pile waiting to be washed and dried. Almost like the clean laundry is mocking me.  But I digress.

This weekend we had the big things happen:

1) We finished cement boarding the kitchen floor- Now it's ready for tile.
2) A paint color for the walls has been chosen. We think. I have several patches around the room that we are still trying on. But we are on day three and I still think it's the one!
3) We started to hang drywall.

But Carrie, you ask; why do you need to hang drywall?

This:

It's certainly a look

All of this lovely tin tile back splash was adhered with mastic. Which means we couldn't scrape it off and try again with tile and thin set. 

And this:

I don't need poop in my walls

 When we were working on the plumbing, I kept catching the delicate aroma of urine, and as it turns out, we found the other mouse nest. This is 4 inches from the ceiling, and they had tunnelled up through the insulation to the nest. So all the insulation and thin plywood came down so we could bleach and mitigate the problem. (As an FYI, I stuffed steel wool into all the available openings in the floor and near the pipes. Knock on wood, I haven't seen new droppings since. But it's getting to be winter time.)

Here I am, working on the house. The Hubbs thinks it's hysterical when I have all the gear on. Safety first!

Getting rid of the trim

don't forget the safety gear!

Down to studs. Again.

So now all the panelling is down and we are once again down to studs. But it's ok, because now we can air out the mouse nest and I sprayed bleach all over the walls to disinfect. It's much better now. This all happened before my Dad, the general contractor, came to visit. He took one look and told us to scrap all the old insulation. It wasn't R13 and wouldn't give us enough insulation in the winter, or summer for that matter. I don't recommend ripping down walls to add better insulation, but if they are down, why not? a 60 foot roll is $10 and will be worth it, so when in doubt... Pad it out. Sorry, that was lame. 

So while Will trimmed the last of the cement board, I started to instal our new, state of the art R13 insulation. Just me, my tape measure, razor and staple gun. Maybe I'm a total weirdo, but I had a lot of fun stapling away. Like this was MY wall to seal up. 

Once I was done with my insulating, I went back to the floor while Will trimmed the dry wall. We then scootched it up to the wall and drove it in place. And voila! One wall down, one more to go!

You may have noticed that we don't have seams taped yet, we are waiting on the other wall to go up and tape all at once. Plus, this will all be covered with cabinets and backsplash, so we aren't too worried!