Inside Out

I've been making good progress this week. I had the drywall, house wrap and siding delivered Monday, and I've been busy putting the drywall up since. City of Oakland requirement or no, exterior drywall still just looks weird. I've done work in a lot of Habitat houses that have some or all of the drywall up, and this looks just like them...except on the outside. Part of my brain keeps objecting, "this is wrong!" I keep thinking of the scene from Galaxy Quest where they test the transporter on the pig-lizard thing and it makes it to the ship...inside out ("And then it exploded!") Excellent movie, by the way -- very entertaining.

Fortunately we've had a nice stretch of dry weather, so no immediate worries about the drywall getting damp before I finish putting it up and get some house wrap over it.

Kat helped me some today. I haven't had Abel or Edis all week because first I couldn't find their numbers, and then I couldn't get a hold of them. So I've moved a lot of drywall, siding and concrete (for the new front walk) by myself. 800 lbs. of concrete and who knows how much drywall and siding. The precision needed for exterior drywall is lower than for normal drywall, so I've been doing OK hanging it myself. Working from the bottom up instead of the normal top down for drywall has helped, too. I can balance each course on the one below it. And the fact that I don't need to hit studs (1/2" drywall plus 5/8" sheathing makes for enough wall by itself) is the final win.