Fall 21 ORC Week Five: Drywall & Electrical
It’s week five of the One Room Challenge! Our room still looks like a construction zone, but we have some big progress to share. We’ve had contractors working on the drywall and electrical for our family room over the past two weeks. It’s taken longer to complete than we were hoping, but we’re really starting to see this room transform.
I’ll admit, working with contractors is not my favorite. Dealing with difficult personalities, scheduling conflicts, and putting trust in people you’ve only just met to do a good job and finish on-time can be a lot of added stress. On the other hand, after seeing the work they’ve completed, I realize there was no way Zach and I could have done this ourselves by our deadline. Even with some bumps along the way, I’m happy we decided to hire out for these two jobs.
We had some struggles in the beginning with our drywall contractor during the framing phase of the project. Because the walls in our basement are very thick and made of concrete, the 1 x 2 furring strips weren’t staying in place. Our contractor had used minimal amounts of adhesive on the back and either one 4-inch powder-actuated/Ramset nail or tapcon anchor for each piece of wood. For some reason, neither of the anchors were working very well. Some of the furring strips were detaching from the walls when our electrical contractor came to do the rough-in work, and we were extremely worried our completed walls would just fall off one day. We went back and forth with our drywall contractor about this, and ultimately he used additional Liquid Nails construction adhesive and shorter (2 1/2-inch) powder-actuated nails to attach the furring strips much more securely to the wall.
We originally had one big fluorescent light fixture in the middle of our ceiling, pictured above. We now have six recessed can lights, which have been one of my favorite changes to this room. It’s amazing how much light transforms a space, and even though this room gets decent natural light from the small south and west facing windows, the added warmth from the can lights distributed throughout the room makes this space so much more inviting.
Coordinating schedules for both contractors was another tricky thing to work out. We needed the drywall framing done first, then roughing-in the electrical wiring, then drywall again. We’ve had multiple delays from our drywall contractor that I won’t go into detail about, but we’re hopeful it’ll finally be completed by tomorrow.
Despite the delays, the quality of the work has been great. This room has a lot of weird angles and window ledges to deal with, but it’s all starting to look very clean and uniform.
Once the drywall is (hopefully!) complete tomorrow, we’re kicking things into high gear with wall mudding, priming, and painting. Because the contracted work took longer than we’d hoped, we’re planning to rent a paint sprayer from Home Depot to speed things up.
My post next week will cover the next phase of the project: painting and floor installation, which means we’re getting close to the home stretch. After all this hard work, we're so excited to see this space come together in the final three weeks!
Thank you again to our partners who are helping us with the One Room Challenge!
There are so many incredible projects going on this fall for the One Room Challenge. Make sure to check them out!
