Hi everyone! I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back to the blog, time got away from me and we found ourselves involved in a local event. The Greenbrier Valley home tour is this year and we’ve been honored with the request to allow our home to be a part of it! Check it out. https://greenbriervalleyhomeandgardentour.com/

It’s coming up in just two weeks and to prep for the tour, I’ve been doing a little work behind the scenes, researching the home’s owners, their history, developing informative posters for the tour, finding “before and after” pics, group meetings, etc..). But even with that going on, I was mainly waiting to post again until we reached our next step on the kitchen and we finally have!

Now that the kitchen had wiring and electrical completed, it was time for the drywall. A few weeks back we made the decision to purchase a drywall hoist. We will definitely need it in this house as many of the ceilings have small areas to work on and renting one would have ended up costing us more in the long run. Plus it’s actually kind of fun to use.

Initially, the drywall was going up easily enough. Where we had rebuilt a new section of framing, it was essentially “new construction” and all the ceiling drywall went up in one day. Wham bam done.

However, although these old beams are as strong as they come, we quickly discovered they were not all flush or level at the surface (apparently, plaster application is much more forgiving if all the studs are not level. Drywall? Not so much lol). Not to mention there were some places where the plaster was so thick, over a wire mesh, over exterior siding, and was actually in pretty good shape, that it made more sense to leave the old plaster and try to match the drywall next to it. That seemed easy enough on paper but we needed it to appear seamless – therein was the tricky part.

Trying to match not only the depth with the new drywall (which size drywall to buy) but find where studs are and if there aren’t any there, Paul would find a way to create boards to afix for us to screw the drywall to. Add to that, in the end it all needed have a smooth finish.

And as many of you know, these old homes are a bit quirky with how the kitchens were built and the corners are tight here, but jut out there, oh and there’s a fireplace there but wait, there’s plaster edges exposed and a big space there. ugh… lol.

Every turn seemed to be a new head scratcher. We wanted to use the largest drywall pieces we could, cutting them to fit as precisely as possible in these very odd spaces. It was definitely a balance between unusual walls, working around exposed radiator pipes, bricks and trying our hardest not to give up at the end of a long day and make a jigsaw puzzle of 2 foot pieces simply to get it done. But we held tight and used as few pieces as possible. It was a bit of a process but we got our system down and got faster at it. We shimmed here, added a side board there, cut (and re-cut there, lol), and finally, it’s all up!

Tape and mud time, then sanding and wow, it’s starting to really take shape and simply feel CLEAN.

For a quick side note, a local cat has adopted us, it seems.

The cat started hanging out at the house and watching us. She/He was timid and would never let us get too close. We decided to start feeding it, as there are a lot of mice in the area with all of the woods close by so it made sense. And the cat seemed like he wanted to be there.

So every day, and every evening, we’d put out a bowl with some food and water. And just about everyday it watched us, sometimes looking through a window or coming to the edge of an open door to peek inside and see what we’re doing (wondering why we were making all of that noise, probably, lol).

The other morning when we arrived at the house, we walked up and found a dead mouse laid on our back patio right where we go in. For those who know cats, this is a good thing and called a “trophy” to bring home a kill for the family. We turned and saw, peeking from behind the corner, the timid cat was watching to see us find it. Needless to say, the cat got extra portions that day.