Drywall is an acceptable Christmas present - right?

When we looked at our house for the first time we made a deal that, if we bought the house, my husband could turn the full basement into a game room complete with pool table, dart board and bar.  

            The pool table showed up less than two months after we moved in and the dart board wasn’t far behind. Now we were spending a lot of time in a space that featured pink fiberglass insulation as a major decorating element. Every time someone missed the dart board they had to dig the dart out of the “wall”. The basement needed finishing and, since we were hosting a New Year’s party in three weeks, that was his goal and this was going to be his project.



What the basement looked like when we started. This is about half of what needed done.



Before we go any further, I should let you know that the one house project above all others that my husband hates is drywall. I’m not talking about the normal distaste for tedious projects either; this is the “would sell several major organs and perhaps even some reasonably profitable minor ones to not have to do this” kind of hate. 

Enter: one of my Great Ideas.

My husband had to be gone for four days (leaving Sunday night and getting back Thursday evening) and I would drywall the basement for him, during that time, as a surprise.  The studs and insulation were already in; it was just sixteen or seventeen sheets of drywall and the trim.  I helped with a little of the drywall in our last house.  It’d be fine.

            In case you were wondering, my compensating for a lack of comprehension for the enormity of a project with a completely disproportionate sense of my ability to tackle it will probably become a re-occurring theme in this blog.

I had the whole thing planned out. I would go to the home improvement warehouse and get half the drywall (that’s all the weight my little truck will hold) when my husband left Sunday night. That would give me all day Monday to install it. Then I could go Monday evening and get the rest of the drywall and install that Tuesday. I would do the first coat of mud Tuesday night, and the second on Wednesday. While the mud was drying I would stain the trim. Painting and trim installation would happen Thursday before he got home. Piece of cake.

So, for anyone else with the ability to underestimate a project and overestimate their ability to do it at the same time, here’s what I learned.

If you tell a good friend about a project and their eyes get big and they say something like “Wow. That’s going to be a…challenge” because they’re the kind of person who’s too nice to say “Are you @#$&ing crazy?!?”,  you may want to reconsider the project.

For major home improvement warehouse cashiers: When a 5’3” girl is buying 9 sheets of drywall, drywall tape, and a 5 gallon bucket of drywall mud by herself  do not tell her to “Have a nice day.” A nice day is not in the cards. Especially when it involves getting 9 sheets of drywall into a basement that can only be accessed by a set of stairs with a 90 degree turn in them. When she returns the next day for more drywall, do not ask her what she did with the last batch. “I built a bonfire in the front yard. Turns out this stuff doesn’t burn worth a crap so I had to come back for more.” Really? What do you think I did with it?

It is possible to miss a 2 inch stud eight times with the same screw. Mark stud locations on the cement floor with chalk. This won’t make it any easier to hit the studs on the first try – but it will make you feel smarter.

There is no good way to determine the location of an outlet box until you get a hole cut for it. Oh, sure, some people have a theory about measuring, but that will only get you close. Your best bet is to cut the hole, lift the drywall and stagger forward with it while attempting to look down and determine if the hole is even close to the box. Assuming it is, push the drywall in place and gently tap the area around the outlet box until enough drywall breaks off to let the box slip through the hole.  The hole may now be slightly larger than planned. Mud will fix this.

Drywall looks flat. Walls look flat - until you’re trying to get two sheets of drywall to line up on them. Then you may realize that individual studs can be out of “alignment” by several inches and your house still won’t fall over. While this is comforting to know, it doesn’t make mudding the drywall any easier. You may have to build up several coats of mud to hide the discrepancy. Or you may want to put a really tall, really permanent piece of furniture there. I’d recommend the furniture.

Hanging a 12’ ceiling trim board alone isn’t impossible. Drive a screw partway into the wall about a foot from the where the end of the board will go and high enough that it will eventually be covered by the board. Set one end of the board on the screw and attempt to get the other end of the board attached where it belongs before the screw falls out of the wall. Realize that you set the screw too low and now there’s a hole in the wall below the trim. Fill this hole with paint until you can’t see it.



And, most importantly, it turns out that drywall is a completely acceptable Christmas present. At least, it is when your husband returns after a week away to find the basement that he had been dreading the entire time he was gone more or less drywalled, painted, and trimmed.

The basement as my husband found it when he got home.