Basement Renovation: Dry wall

Hope everyone had a great Easter, sorry I'm late with my usualy Sunday update. It was partially due to Easter and partially I was waiting for the drywall to be complete so I could say IT'S DONE!

This past week was all about dry wall. As I mentioned last week, we had our drywall delivered last weekend. We decided to spend our money wisely and pay to have the dry wall hung and finished professionally. There were several reasons for this. Here are the most important:

First, who knows what it would have looked like if Chad and I had hung and finished it. We wanted our walls to look nice. Especially the ceiling, since we are doing a dry wall ceiling with no stucco (just smooth like the walls).

Second, it's super hard work! Everyone that we have talked to that's hung and/or finished their own dry wall talks about how hard it was. We would have had to ask friends to help us and who knows how long it would have taken.

Which brings me to reason #3, time. Not that we are in any big hurry, but it could have taken us a month to hang and finish the dry wall. The professionals are able to do it in a weeks time. They started on a Wednesday and they finished the following Wednesday (they didn't work on Sunday or Tuesday).

Day one: They spent at least 8 hours hanging the dry wall and got it almost all hung. They only had the bathroom and the play room still to hang. (all of the above pictures were after day 1)

Day two: They finished hanging the rest of the dry wall and they finished the first coat of mud. This was another long day, about 7 hours.

Day three: This day only required one of the guys to come back. He sanded and put another coat of mud on in about 3 hours.

Day four: Again, only one guy came over this day. All he did was carry all the scrap pieces of dry wall out to his truck and overall cleaned up all their tools and stuff.

Day five: This was another one man, short day. He spent a couple hours putting the last "skim" coat of dry wall mud on the walls.

Day six: This was the last day. We weren't home for this (we had my dad stop over to let them in), so I'm not sure how many people or how long it took. But, they finished the job by sanding everything smooth. 

Other things we did this week:

We started to research sound systems for the entertainment area. We are weighing our options (and there are a lot): In ceiling speakers vs stand alone speakers, all in one sets vs. buying each part separately. 

We went paint shopping which was a LONG trip to Lowe's, picking paint colors is HARD!! Thank goodness we had my parents there to help mediate and tell us their opinons, ultimately Chad picked our main color and the accent wall and I chose the bathroom and playroom colors to flow! My issue is I have trouble visualzing things on the larger scale. I can't picture that small swatch of paint on a large surface area. So it was best that I left the larger areas up to people able to visualized the big picture! You will have to wait until next week to find out the paint colors we chose. I know the suspense is killing you!

This Weeks Costs

Dry wall - $574

Dry wall delivery - $69

Labor (and supplies: mud, tape, etc) - $1275 
 

Things I forgot to put on last weeks costs

Bathroom vent - $13 

More cable stuff - $14

More speaker wire - $15

This weeks total - $1,960

Project total - $4,549

Things I learned this week:  Paying for the labor was well worth it! Not only was it so much better sitting on my couch rather than covered in dry wall mud. But, our walls look 1000 times better because of it!  There are some things that I need to not have control over (i.e. paint). This is better left to people that are good at it (i.e. Chad and my parents)

This weeks plans: This week our plan is to get the entire space painted! Hopefully we like the colors that we picked and we only have to paint once! I guess you'll find out next week! We have family coming over Saturday to join in the painting fun! We first have to mop the floors and wipe down all the walls and ceiling. We have to primer ALL the walls and ceiling. Then we can paint the walls (and ceiling). Sound fun!? Come join! =)

I am not a professional and all my advice and tips are purely from my own experiences.