Last week, Marilyn of Hauser Haus kindly pointed out that when hung the closet door so that it opened inward, we essentially cut our storage space in half. And the minute I read her comment, I went “DOH!”. How could we have mindlessly hung it the way we had, and then how we could have left it that way after seeing it in action. Why did no light bulb go off? It was so obvious, and such a silly mistake to make, but it shows you where our heads are at right now. Puttering through these tasks means we’re giving them far less concentrated mental energy, but luckily a little oops like that is easy to fix. Thanks to Marilyn, the door hinges have been swapped and it now opens outward, giving me ample space to pile crap in.
We decided to just go over the old ceiling to avoid more messy demo; what’s there now is a layer of lath, a layer of sheetrock, and the popcorn paint stuff. Someone must have taken the plaster down many years ago.
The ceiling in the craft room is hideous, so we’re sheetrocking it while we’re on a roll. It currently features a lovely “popcorn” texture that is peeling due to water damage from the formerly leaky roof. It also has a few holes from our overzealous demolition and my inability to keep from poking at things. But some of the holes came in handy, since they made joist-finding a lot easier.
We spent part of the weekend cutting and attaching the sheetrock, which is waiting for seam taping. Unlike our other ceilings which are 10+ feet high, this ceiling is of average height making it much easier to sheetrock. Thank god for that… despite doing shoulder presses a few times a week at the gym, I have absolutely no “over the head” arm strength. Ceilings are a constant source of embarrassment for me. No matter how hard I try to hold up my end of the sheetrock so we can screw it in, about 30 seconds into it my arms start shaking violently. At which point I start yelling to get a few screws in there before I drop it. The less girly screaming I have to do, the better.
Comments, Thoughts, and Feedback
another girl here with less than stellar upper arm strength. you’re right, it’s downright embarrassing.
How come you didn’t reverse the swing of the door, such that it opened into the corner? That way it wouldn’t open into the room and block the pathway into the closet.
Did you know you can rent a drywall jack at your local hardware/big box home depot type stores? It’s insanely cheap ($20-$50 a day) and would really save your shoulders. Plus the quantity of drywall you could hang in the same amount of time would double because now you can both screw in at the same time! I’ve done it both ways and I’ll never hang a ceiling without one again. If you’ve got a ton of ceilings to do it might be worth it to buy one. Amazon has one for $170. So many things in working on a house can be back breaking, try to spare yourself where you can.
It doesn’t really matter if you’re not getting the house inspected, but, at least around here, closet doors are supposed to open inward if you can walk into the closet. It is a waste of space, but I think the reason is that if you walk into a room/large closet and something falls across the door, you need a way out.
Nick,
Brainfart? Actually – Teague tackled this one while I was at work the other day, but my guess is that it required less finagling with that crappy door frame. Because when you cheap out and pay $60 for the set, you get a door and frame that just barely stay together.
Tina – We’ve rented one of those before and I agree, awesome to have. Definitely necessary for anything over 8 feet, because ladders and drills and drywall sheets do not mix well! I have been injured more than once trying to tackle things the old-fashioned way. We talked about renting a lift for this ceiling but in the end decided that since it was a small space and a low ceiling we could tough it out. Our nearest rental place is 45 minutes away, so that also had some bearing on the decision.
Hailey – good to know, I never would have considered it an issue since all our closet doors open out (as do all I can recall from other houses around here). I’ll have to peek into our NYS code book to double check that.
we drywalled our ceilings in the garage 10′ high and a big area the jack was the best it was $35. at that point i would have paid $100. much better than a head injury. got it done in about 1/2 day . theres a lot of stuff couldnt come out. also because it was a garage we had to use 5/8″ very heavy stuff. if i had much drywall work to do id buy one
Got an answer on the door thing, Nick – we would have had to buy a door that swung out the other way. Since we already mangled this one up good, I don’t think they’d take kindly to us returning it and I’m happy with how it works now :)
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