Well Hung

Sometimes I think my weekend warring shall never end, but I do sense that last weekend served as the last major overhaul of work to be done in the Shanty, i.e. work that requires at least two people to complete. Last Saturday, my father and I spent the majority of the day heaving, hauling and hanging drywall.

I definitely started the day as a novice, timid and uncertain how to do anything. I was scoring and snapping the drywall, but it wasn't breaking cleanly. I kept mishandling the drill as I screwed the panels into place, which left me with little phillips head shaped dings in the fresh wall coverings. However, as the day progressed and my skills became more refined, I was able to snap a clean break of drywall, and cleanly screw it into place. I don't know if I would say it was fun, because it was not only physically taxing, but mentally exhausting since there are a great many unique geometry problems to be solved when it comes to my customized little Shanty.

I shall have to post some photos soon, though I have taken none yet, so that you may observe the fruits of my labor. I would also like to say that I recognize that spackling that B is going to be another grueling task, but mind you, one I can do with my own might.

Today I purchased some lengths of poplar which I shall trim and size to my windows tomorrow, to serve as a (modest) finished sill. I have developed a strategy for window coverings that will hopefully not encourage egg sacks (I have found that spiders are still finding their way inside the Shanty, despite my attempts at sealing it, and they are very quick to employ any fold of fabric as an egg depository). For this, I have purchased some wood dowels. More on that one later.

I also bought some more expandable foam sealant, to hopefully finish the roof sealing job. Lastly, I got some weather stripping for the windows, I'm not sure how easy it will be to install, so I only picked up 10' of it for now. Photos of my successes/failures to come tomorrow, methinks.

I probably owe 90% of my motivation to finish out the Shanty to the book I am just about finished. I mention it all the time now, but it is so crazy how similar the story is to my own story with the Shanty. I don't want to sound like a complete idiot to the architect at work who recommended it to me, so I am not sure how many parallels I shall disclose to him.

In conclusion, I do believe my drywall, with all its little mars and footprints is pretty well hung.

Just got out to take some photos this afternoon. I ended up not working on the sills as I had planned, in part to an onslaught of precipitation in the afternoon.




You can see it's pretty dark for being close to 2 o'clock in the afternoon, thank you, Cumulonimbus:






View towards the NE corner. Still thinking about how I may finish the door:






Here you can see all the in-swinging casements in action. Local critics suggest a classier alternative to the blue jump-rope looking hoists I've implemented:






These poplar boards will become the aforementioned sills. With time: