After arriving at home from work on Friday, I spent about four hours hanging drywall in the bathroom. I completed the interior walls of the bathroom, except for the bit above the closet door. I should be able to finish that off tonight. It was fairly easy work, besides the one full size sheet I had to hang across the doorway. I put my drill into my toolbelt, lifted the sheet with both hands, then put my shoulder into it while I got a few screws in place. I don’t recommend trying that… Help is always necessary when hanging drywall horizontally!

The rest of the weekend was spent planning and assembling the remaining plumbing hookups for the bathroom. To get things started, I figured out where the shower valve would be placed on the wall, and cut a hole for the valve to poke through. I assembled the valve with it’s proper pipes, to be coupled to the rest of the pipes later…

On Sunday, Lee was over helping, and we worked on finishing off the system. We added these two valves above the laundry room, so that I could cut off the water to the bathroom in a hurry if necessary. After soldering these, we later discovered the hot side leaking, so we had to resolder it. Later that night, Chantale and I noticed the cold side dripping, so we also had to resolder that one!

While waiting for the valves to cool down, we soldered the shower valve assembly in place (Seen above). This one was easy, as I had soldered all the lines the day before… All that was needed was to couple it to the water lines hanging in the wall. It turns out one of my threaded connections started leaking later that night, so that one had to be rewrapped with teflon tape and reseated.

After working on the shower hookup, we attacked the sink hookup. My first beginner mistake a month ago was bringing the water lines off on the wrong side, resulting in the hot and cold pipes in the wall being backwards. This fancy crossover was assembled to bring them back to the right side. Amazingly, this rather complex connection didn’t leak at all!

Later that night, after Lee left, Chantale and I finished up the toilet connection (This one was easy!) and let the water in! As stated earlier, we discovered a leak on the cold water valve in the laundry room (And resoldered it), and a very slow leak on one of the threaded connections to the shower valve. That one was a little more work, but not too bad!

In my opinion, it all turned out rather nice… I’m leaving the system pressurized for the next week to make sure no leaks develop. To view more pictures, be sure to click on any of the pictures in this post and browse through our gallery!

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On the left, the original stack of drywall (Plus all of the insulation, more than half of which has been used already)… On the right, the stack as of December 4th, 2006. Of the original 90 sheets of drywall, we have used about 40 sheets. Based on walls/ceilings completed, we figure we are just about half done hanging drywall. At this rate, we should have just the right amount of drywall, if not a bit extra!

In this shot, you can see Max perusing our work… He has been a real work-cat… From day one he has been involved in every aspect of this project:

• Climbing on and under the pile of debris
• Walking in the cement and leveler when I poured it
• Clawing up and laying in the insulation
• Laying in the pile of sawdust by the miter saw
• Playing with random objects (Nails, screws, wood, wire, screwdrivers, etc) on the floor
• Laying in the trench that the plumber dug beneath the concrete, and then
• Using the same trench as a litter box…
• Laying on the pile of drywall while Colin tries to cut it…

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I could think of for now! It’s always fun having a weird cat around…

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This is a picture of my office, after we finished hanging all the drywall. In this shot, you can see the hole cut out for the air duct… It was cut out using a Mastercraft Maximum rotary tool, very similar to a RotoZip. This tool is extremely useful for drywall work! We haven’t cut the holes out for the lights yet, but their distances from the wall are marked along the joists, so we can use the same tool with it’s included circle cutter to cut out 5 inch holes for the recessed lighting.In order to make it as quiet as possible in these rooms, and to reduce noise traveling through the floor to the rooms upstairs, we’ve insulated all the ceiling and wall spaces with Roxul Safe & Sound insulation. This stuff has great acoustical blocking qualities, and is also a great fire block… It will not burn!

This is the storage/work room in the northwest corner of the basement. To the east it opens into my office, and to the south into the furnace room through a pocket door. We put up drywall everywhere in this room, ceilings included. The floor will eventually get new tough linoleum. I plan to build a workbench directly below the window (Thus the high outlets, for tools), and storage shelving along the north wall (On the right).

This is a shot of the furnace room… The walls in here are insulated and covered in drywall. The ceiling will not be drywalled, however I will be putting in as much insulation as possible, and holding it up with vapor barrier plastic. I am undecided about how far I will go to finish the walls in this room. I might mud them and not paint them, or I might just mud and prime them. The floor will have it’s linoleum scraped off, and painted with high quality gray concrete cement.

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Here you can see the progress after two sessions of hanging drywall. We spent three hours one day, and three hours the next day to get this much done. Hanging drywall is fairly easy, and doesn’t require any level of precision to get it looking good. The room in the picture is my soon to be office. Since this picture, Lee, Colin and myself spent another evening finishing the ceiling in this room, and started into my utility/storage room.

I picked up a Roto-Zip type tool (Mastercraft Maximum) at a great price, and found it to be one of the handiest drywall tools. For cutting out electrical boxes, lights, air ducts, doorways, and windows, nothing could be faster than this… It cuts faster and straighter than a hand drywall saw. I’ll try to take some pictures of this handy device, and maybe some action shots as it’s being used!

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First up is the bathroom! It’s all framed in, and the plumbing is DONE! To finish the job, Colin and I poured sand into the spaces around the pipes, and then poured cement to fill the channels I cut for the plumbing. OH, about that… I highly recommend that if you need to cut concrete, do NOT do it with a masonry blade on a circular saw. Dustiest Job Ever. I’d recommend going with a jackhammer instead… You’ll save a lot of time, and a lot of cleanup.

After pouring concrete to fill the work back in, the floor was not very level. My concrete work was not that great, and the floor had a slant to it to start with. To fix this, we mixed and poured five bags of leveling compound to flatten out the floor. Then, I poured one more bag in the shower area to level that, since it didn’t level as nicely as I had hoped. The result is what you see here, a fairly level floor.

There are a couple bumpy spots, and I plan to cut those down with a side grinder, and then patch them with concrete patching compound. I hope that goes well!

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I know, I haven’t written anything in a couple weeks… I really have no excuse, just pure laziness.

We’ve been quite busy in the basement… Here’s a list of what has been done:

• Exterior wall insulation
• Vapour barrier
• Office/Bedroom framed
• Utility/Storage room framed
• Bathroom framed
• Closets in Office and Bathroom framed
• Pocket door between utility room and furnace room installed.

I’ll try to get a few pictures up soon!

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To get started on the framing, the first step was to install vapour barrier on the outside walls. As “suggested” by the City of Regina, this barrier should start above ground level, come down the outside of the wall, then fold under and back up. After the wiring and insulation are in place, more barrier is added which extends all the way up to the floor above. Acoustical sealant is used to hold the barrier in place. This can be a pain, because the stuff doesn’t really dry, so you are constantly fighting with it to keep the barrier on the wall before you start framing. We used 2×4 lumber to hold it in place where it was trying to fall.

Here is a picture of the first wall completed. On Saturday morning, Chantale and I finished about 16′ of framing, before I realized that toe-nailing into the top plate was going to make this job frustrating as Hell. That’s about the point when we took a break, and went out to buy the compressor and framing nailer (See the post below). Saturday afternoon, Colin came over, and we finished another 16′ section. Working with the nailer made the job much more enjoyable! We then took a break for supper, and completed the last section of wall immediately after (Followed by a trip to the movies!)

On Sunday afternoon, Colin came over again, and we framed the North wall, which included a window, a beam, and some vents for the furnace. Boxing around the vents and framing the window were definitely a learning experience, but I think we did ok!

On Monday evening, Chantale and I framed half of the South wall, including the window. This puts the outside wall framing at well over half done! We should be able to finish the outside wall framing this week and Saturday, and start on the inside wall framing. I can’t wait!

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In order to get started on the basement, we had to complete a few preparation steps. One of those steps was filling in a low spot in the concrete with floor leveler. I started by mixing and pouring in one 50lb bag of automatic floor leveling compound, and then quickly realized that it was going to take more… a LOT more. I picked up a bag of cement, mixed it up, and poured it… and found it nearly impossible to smooth out due to the high content of rocks in the mix. Next, I picked up four bags of a smoother topping cement, mixed it ALL, and poured it in. MUCH better. It was far easier to smooth it out, and filled the space nicely. Once that was set, I poured three more bags of self-leveling compound on top, to fill it out nicely. In total, that’s four bags of self leveling compound at $43 per bag, and four bags of cement at about $6 per bag. $196 total just to bring the floor more or less to level. Ouch! It looks great though!

Since I had the cement, I completed another prep-step while it was wet. I cut off this pipe sticking out of the ground, and filled it with cement. Our building inspector told us it was part of a pre-existing drainage system, and could be removed.

In addition to the cement, there were (and still are) a few other things that had (have?) to be done… Pulling nails, removing old vacuum tubing, changing the water pipes to fit the new layout, hauling in lumber, buying toys, err, tools to help with construction. (More on that in the next post!)

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