Renovate Brooklyn! Day Nine: Let the dry-walling begin.

Big movements on the home front! 

Well, eventually. First we spent Saturday doing almost nothing constructive, until the last possible minute when we managed to make it to Home Depot and do our shopping. At least this allowed for a full day of work on Sunday. Why didn't we get anything done on Saturday, you wonder? Because John and his work friend Andrew went to a shooting range in New Jersey! What, you say? I know. Me too. Apparently one of the police consultants from Blue Bloods invited them out to New Jersey to shoot guns and they simply couldn't resist. I'm as puzzled as the next guy. What can I say?

Andrew and John pretending to be cops. Oy!

So... after that escapade... We began the slow going process of dry-walling the exposed beams in the living room. This shouldn't have been so difficult, but first John had to jigger around the existing electrical boxes to get everything back in place since we had up-ended everything when we took down the wall. He did an A+ awesome job, and when we turned the power back on, EVERYTHING WORKED- THE FIRST TIME! (If you've ever danced with electrical work, you know this is no small feat...)

The living room walls- before. (Note the hole in the floor...)

John, working feverishly on the electrical stuff. Success is around the corner!

 Meanwhile, I was meticulously cutting each piece of drywall to fit around the window opening, outlet covers and switch plates, which is a time consuming but rewarding job. Every time you finish a piece, you get to see a real tangible state of change, which almost makes up for the painful calluses you get from using an exacto knife for 10 straight hours. We also filled in the hole in the floor that was left when we removed the wall. This is a small change, but man- what a difference! It was only half an inch deep and about seven feet long, but really, you'd be surprised how often you can trip on a hole 1/2" deep.

John, playing coy.

Me, wondering what I've gotten myself in to.

 Tonight, we're going to begin the spackling, taping, and corner beading. This is going to be an ugly process. Prepare to see many photographs of us looking like we've been dunked in a bucket of "flour". (Colombian drug lords gone wild!) That's how white and powdery this is going to get.

 

*Look how nicely the light passes through the little window and casts beautiful shadows onto the wall!

Props to John for the particularly savvy photos too.

Here goes!