Day 6: Mud Men

Day 6 (aka Day 2 of Week 2) is almost at a close, and it was another one that saw some nice progress. Today we had the drywall experts in to fix holes and start the process of making the kitchen and dining room look more like actual living spaces again. They put up some new drywall over the supporting beam between the kitchen and dining area and also ended up putting new drywall on the entire ceiling so that they have a nice, level, even surface.

Here are a couple of photos I took while they were on a break fairly early in the day:

In this photo you can see where they're installing new drywall on the ceiling.

Covering the big holes!

Once all the drywall was up, the next step was to put up the "mud" to cover all the seams, screws, etc. That's all done, but I was on the run by the time they finished and didn't get photos, so I'll do that in the morning.

Tomorrow they come to sand and finish up; Thursday the whole kitchen/dining area will get painted -- and it will really begin to look like a room!

The funny thing for today: as you might have noticed in some of the earlier photos, our subfloor is made of individual boards (no plywood subfloors in 1956!). They're fabulous -- strong and durable ("They don't build like this anymore," as our contractor says). The only problem is that because they are individual boards, there are small spaces between them after 50+ years, and that causes some issues for dirt in the basement.

Today Ray went down to do some laundry, and just as he was getting ready to put in a load, the Mud Men started to sweep upstairs! Down came a shower of plaster dust and bits of drywall (good thing he wasn't in the process of taking the fresh laundry OUT . . . we already had that particular little surprise last week).

Everything's going great and seems to be right on schedule. The plumber is supposed to come by tomorrow, so cross your fingers for us!