My New Shop, Episode 6: Time to play in the mud

The past few days have seen a nice bit of progress made on the basement workshop. Sunday afternoon, I went downstairs, put on some Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and finished hanging some drywall inside the room that my little brother and I hadn't bothered with before. The pieces were all pretty small and I could easily handle them on my own.

After that, I cut open a bag of formaldehyde-free fiberglass insulation and started filling in voids in the highest spaces. There were several larger areas in the floor joists I wanted to make sure had as much sound-proofing as possible.

When that was done, I insulated the walls. It seemed to go faster than my last insulating session - maybe because I wasn't working over my head the entire time. One small part by the furnace slowed me down; I popped the nails on one side of a sheet of existing drywall, turned off the heat pump, removed some duct work (to the whole-house humidifier), pried it open as far as I could (there was more duct work in the way), and managed to wiggle some insulation between the studs. Then I closed it back up, re-attached the duct work, and continued with insulating the walls. I had to stop before I could hang any more drywall because it was getting late.

Yesterday evening found me back down in the basement, hanging drywall. Except for the part where I was trying to move sheets of drywall by myself, this went very smoothly. The full sheets were all up in the garage; I quickly determined I should measure first and cut them into the desired sizes prior to lugging them down the basement steps. This part took me about two hours or so.

I did not hang drywall on the framed wall past the furnace. I'd like to use that area for pegboard and organize my less-often used tools (clamps and jigs and the like). Taking advantage of other areas of the basement will mean less clutter in my limited shop space.

I suppose the title of this entry is a bit mis-leading. I'm not going to tape and mud the drywall myself - I know my own limitations and I'd rather get this done within the next year or two. So this afternoon, I'll start calling a few people recommended to me by friends to get some bids on taping and mudding the room.

That will take me into a nice little vacation starting tomorrow morning when Dana and I will drive up to Ohio to visit her family over the holiday weekend.