Drywall

Apr 16, 2001

The past week has seemed to go pretty slowly with mostly just drywall work. This has taken a full week due to the humidity keeping the drywall mud from drying quickly. But as of today the rough drywall is done. All the drywall sanding should be finished later today, and the trim work begins tomorrow. This is good news because we should finally be able to turn the A/C back on (it was off to keep from spreading drywall dust throughout the house).
The theater now has two layers of drywall everywhere. The first layer is 5/8" commercial fire-rated drywall, and the second layer is the ordinary 1/2" residential drywall. Both layers are installed with construction adhesive and screws to prevent rattles and vibrations later on. The thick drywall does present some problems in that all the electrical boxes and light fixture boxes will need box extenders.
Drywall photos: Theater Front Theater Right Theater Back Left Bedroom Bathroom
We spent the weekend buying fixtures and picking out trim. What a chore! We bought a vanity, light fixture, tile, plumbing fittings, and toilet for the bathroom. We still need a vanity top and sink, but will probably go with a cultured granite top to keep costs down, and we will need some sort of a mirror. We also bought sconces for the stairway down to the basement, and picked out crown, base, and case moulding for the theater and the rest of the basement. To "dress up" the theater a little, we chose mouldings with a subdued "egg and dart" pattern. The crown and base are both 4" mouldings, slightly heavier than standard, but not so big as to make the room feel closed in. The casing is standard 2 1/4".
We also chose a pattern for the ceiling tile for the one room that will not have a drywall ceiling. This was a little harder than we thought it would be because you can't find a good selection of ceiling tiles at Home Depot or any of the other usual places.
We still need to find sconces for the theater (which is turning out to be hard) and pick out some small items like doorknobs. This is more of a pain than you might think because we eventually need to replace the doorknobs throughout the house since they are tarnished and beginning to break, so picking out doorknobs for the basement is really picking them out for the entire house.
And of course there is the need to choose fabric and paint colors for the theater and the other basement rooms, and of course we will need carpet. It probably wouldn't hurt to hire a decorator, but they are such a pain in the a$$ I hate to do it.