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  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle.

    You can find me writing for HGTV and DIY Network, follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

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Drywall Amateurs For The Win

April 19, 2011

What’s up, aspiring DIY drywallers? Here’s a little advice: TRY IT. You won’t do as badly as you thought. And you’ll build up some muscles.

Some projects drag. Believe it or not, we’re still working on that room over at Pete’s parents house, although as you’re about to see, Pete and his dad have made post-worthy progress in the last month; it certainly looks nothing like it did on Day Of The Bat Poop:

Pete surrounded in poop, lath, and plaster. Not looking happy.

We made good progress in a short amount of time: we finished demo, we insulated and then got our drywallin’ on within just a few weekends. As we were mudding and taping, Pete was thoroughly (totally, wholly) convinced that we did a horrible job as amateurs, believing that in the end, we’d be able to see waves in the walls and dips in the ceiling. I somehow “lucked out” (wink) and missed the whole sanding and re-mudding part, only receiving haunting photos of Pete completely covered with sanding powder, sort of how you might imagine he’d look if he went head first into a Sephora display of Bare Escentuals Mineral Veil. Have your visual? No? Does this help?

Bare Escentuals or plaster dust?

His strategy was what we imagined any mudding and drywalling pro would do: he put very thin coats of mud on, and didn’t sand between each layer. Any substantial irregularities were smoothly out with the old “shave it down with your drywall knife” technique. The power of drywall mud. It’s amazing, I tell ya.

Walls and ceiling looking good.

The room really started to take shape once the primer went up. Immediately, the walls were smooth, didn’t look wavy, denty, or dippy at all. Of course, the flatter the paint, the smoother the walls, right? Regardless, it looked awesome. Proud girlie!

Primer on the walls!

And if you think I’m playing photoshop tricks, I received this direct quote from Pete’s dad himself. Dad’s are usually the toughest critics, right?

“The room is ready for paint. You guys did an awesome job. Looks like a pro drywalled. You can now officially list yourself as a drywall technician.”

How ’bout that? I never even considered it as a possible career path. Already updated my LinkedIn experience. I’d do walls again, and as horrible as it was, I’d probably even do ceilings again too (I may just request a few shots of espresso to enhance any superhuman strength I might possess).

And yes, it looked even better with paint, even paint with a little sheen that you’d expect to highlight flaws like Blistex on a cold sore. Sorry, that’s a horrible visual, but this photo is pretty, right?

Light gray walls. Yes, they look this smooth in person too.

The next tasks on the list include door, window, floor and ceiling trim. Oh, and Pete’s planning on doing some nice encasement on the wooden joists beneath the chimney. In the interim, he celebrated his drywalling success with this radical sliding compound miter saw, which I believe is going to make this upcoming and future trim projects (like in my walk-in closet) much easier.

Saw awesomeness. This is going to be fun.

Now that we have the saw and some momentum, we’re gettin’ craaazy. You can expect to see a post about window trim in the near future, because that’s the first thing on our list to finish.

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Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

4 Comments


Brigitte Lyons
April 19, 2011 at 10:26 am
Reply

Oh we’ve done drywalling, too! It’s terrifying, isn’t it, worrying about how it’ll come out. Great job!



    Emily
    April 19, 2011 at 10:29 am

    Thanks Brigitte! Strong-arm-high-five. It’s extremely rewarding to be able to DIY something like this (especially because we were quoted around $1,300 for something that cost us about $300 total. Maybe less.

Irene
April 19, 2011 at 11:33 am
Reply

Compared to all the other things that have to get done when remodeling a home, drywall is easy. The only difficult part is holding it above your head wieh drywalling the ceiling. That shit ain’t light.



    Emily
    April 19, 2011 at 7:24 pm

    Agreed about the lifting overhead thing. We were lucky to have figured out how to make that T support to take a lot of the weight off our own bodies.

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  • HI, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

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