First walls!

I made good progress on the house yesterday. It rained all day so I wasn’t able to work outside cleaning up the bead board as I’d hoped. Instead, I made a trip to the HD and got the supplies I needed to continue working on our new first-floor half-bath. I bought new beadboard for the arched ceiling, some styrene insulation (primarily for sound dampening), and four sheets of drywall. It took most of the day but I got everything installed. I think I have enough drywall scraps left over to do the new hall-closet, and maybe I’ll get to this later today.

The new bead board I bought is pretty different from the stuff I’m working on for our front porch. The new stuff is about a three-eighths of an inch thick – or should I say “thin”. It’s literally about the thickness of the tongue of the old stuff. You can’t tell when it’s installed, and I’m sure it’s made that way because the normal application is wainscoting atop drywall. In my case I installed on the ceiling, which is arched. To create the arch I cut ribs out of plywood and installed them to the framing. The bead board is stapled to the ribs piece by piece around the arch. The staples are hidden by the grove of each successive piece. The end result is pretty cool.

Our plan all along has been to have a contractor come in and do the drywall for the entire first floor. But I was antsy yesterday to see some walls, and so I did the half bath drywall myself. It went well, and I got my workout carrying the 4 sheets up our 33 stairs.

I have to head back to HD today to return some unused bead board, which was nearly $18 a package. I bought 3 packages just in case, and I used 2. Unfortunately, I also was charged for 4 cases because I wasn’t thinking at the checkout when she asked me “3 of these?” I said “4” because I had considered getting 4. Oops. So we’ll see if I can get my money back for that one too. Of course, since yesterday I’ve misplaced my receipt – so I’ll be searching for that momentarily.

Atticus sure is fussy during the day. This kid has lungs.

(here you go, jm.)