Hands-on Drywalling Pointers

As exciting as it is to have both that section of wall and the contractor gone, there is still a lot of work ahead of us before our opening is wrapped up. Unless this is your idea of striking dining room:

Oh and speaking of the contractor, locals have been asking for Steve’s info – and now that we have worked with him and were extremely glad with his result, we will share (we only like passing along people’s info after we work with them, to be sure they are someone we’d recommend). He’s a licensed Class A contractor as opposed to a handyman (so he does not hang doors or build furniture or do odd little jobs), but if you have any big structural work (like knocking down walls, building additions, etc) he’s your guy. His email address is [email protected].

But back to our next steps with the opening. We left the protective plastic up because drywall installation was next up, which can be kinda dusty itself (especially the sanding part). We do not consider ourselves to be drywall installation experts by any means (it was my least go-to part of our bathroom renovation two years ago) but this particular job seemed straightforward and small sufficient that it’d be silly to hire out. We simply needed a span of it across the top of the doorway on the dining room side (to cover the exposed header on that side) and a few sections around the half-wall.

And in fact, the kitchen side of the half-wall will be paneling instead – which is why we had the contractor leave all of the scraps from his demolition. So I simply measured, marked, and cut using my little jigsaw. It was especially swift and straightforward.

So straightforward that I went ahead and set the cabinet against it before proceeding further (Steve in fact suggested doing this before drywalling the back so I could see my studs which would allow me to drill into them more easily/accurately). Note: there will be a 12″ counter overhang behind the peninsula with stools tucked under it, so you will not see quite much of the half-wall from this direction at all when we are done. And we will be topping the half-wall with a chunky wooden ledge to add even more function and balance.

Already looking more wrapped up, right?…. right?

Okay, not truly.

But I was kind of avoiding my next task: getting the drywall pieces home. Obviously I cannot fit a 4ft by 8ft slab of drywall into our Altima. And renting the truck at Lowe’s or Home Depot is consistently an option, but spending $19 to transport $14 worth of drywall seemed silly. So I took another suggestion from Steve The Contractor: cutting the drywall to size before bringing it home. Which is how I found myself setting up shop in the Lowe’s parking lot. Have I no shame? Nope. Especially to save a buck (or 19).

In short I brought my tools with me (measuring tape, pen & blue chalk line to mark, razor blade to cut, yard stick as straight edge, towel to try to keep the car clean-ish), picked up my drywall, and spent about 45 minutes carefully measuring, slicing, and snapping my pieces to size outside. The drywall in the dining room is in fact two panels thick for some reason, so I had to cut two of each size to keep it flush for a hopefully seamless result.

I managed to get my half wall pieces (plus a few scraps) in the trunk…

…and the long pieces for covering the new doorway header barely slid through the middle of the car (along with the door jamb kit, but that is for my next phase of the project). Booyah!

Even though it was a bit awkward working in a public parking lot, it was pleasant to come home and jump right to screwing the drywall into place since it was already cut to size. Sherry helped me by holding one edge up and then I’d screw a few “holding” screws so she could hop down and take flattering photos like this:

But this is where my wow-this-is-going-better-than-I-expected luck ran out. Despite my best measuring efforts (we even took photos of a tape measure next to the existing drywall and the drywall in the store to pick the right depth), my new doubled-up drywall was a smidge thicker than the existing doubled-up drywall. And a smidge is not acceptable when it comes to drywall. This would have looked all sorts of awkward even with mud and tape and some sanding (it would still read as a slope when the light hit it).

So I ditched one panel and relied on a technique that I used while hanging hardibacker and drywall in the bathroom that we gutted: shims. I brought in some wood shims to get my new drywall flush with the rest of the wall. Only I did not have that many shims and furring strips, so I also had get resourceful and dip into our stockpile of paint stir sticks to assist us out. We learned that a few of them screwed together were in fact simply as dense as a furring strip or two. And since the wood + steel header is beyond solid, everything held pleasant and firmly. You can see them poking out there a bit on the bottom (do not worry, that’ll all get covered by trim).

I in short repeated that process for the big panel on the half wall (being sure to get things as flush as humanly possible before drilling). I know what you are thinking. Yes we have accrued quite a stash of stir sticks over the years (likely because they give us one when they hand over our paint and we typically paint right away when we get home so the paint is still stirred from the store’s mixing job).

Fortunately for that little end cap I did not need to match any existing drywall thickness (since it is a new plane) – so a single piece of drywall simply went on straight into the wood frame. Then we used some metal drywalling corner strips to make the edges a bit sharper. Although they are typically not meant for where paneling and drywall meet, we are no strangers to “improvising” along the way, and you will see how it all turned out a bit later (spoiler alert: looks good).

So that completed the hang drywall part (with only one minor hiccup, thankfully). Next up was the drywall mudding part. I left that to Sherry because she has more finesse than I do when it comes to that stuff (at least I tell her that to get out of doing it – the same way she’s better at cutting in).

So Sherry broke out her spackle knives (the girl has a pleasant assortment) and began the lively process of taping, slapping up some drywall mud, smoothing it, letting it dry, sanding it, and then repeating that process. Although she did not tape this crack since it was especially tight (not even much of a crack thanks to a especially tight fit).

She ended up doing three rounds in most spots, since she hoped things to be as smooth and seamless as possible (she chose to caulk that crack up near the crown molding instead of trying to get mud in there with a putty knife, so that is why it is untouched in this photo):

As for the corner things we used around the half-wall, they in fact came out truly well (admittedly better than I hoped, since I consistently worry that something catastrophic might happen to leave the walls looking weird and lumpy). Of course I realize as I write this that I did not take a photo from the other side so I will have to work one of those into a future post. But the corner piece and drywall mud seem to work simply fine with the wood paneling – and once it is all primed and painted it’ll effectively be “sealed” in there for a pleasant durable and straight-looking end result.

So… it is certainly looking more wrapped up than it did this morning… but nowhere near totally wrapped up.

I am the first to admit that the whole opening still looks kind of crazytown because:

• there is not any trim to unify it with the other doorways nearby
• the baseboards are not complete on either side (they simply end at the half-wall)
• there is no wooden ledge above the half-wall to add some extra function and balance (we will tackle that along with the trim/baseboards next)
• there is not a big peninsula with stools and a giant slab of counter behind the half-wall to make sense of it
• there are plenty of things we have to prime/paint, so it is looking extra rough

So the whole thing is sort of out-of-context right now. But it’ll get there – slowly but surely. Oh and we mentioned this in a past post (this one), but for anyone tuning in now, here is why we opted for a half-wall instead of a full opening with a peninsula floating between each room:

• we did not want the peninsula to look like an afterthought (like it was placed in the middle of a doorway without much planning)
• we thought the half-wall would ground the peninsula, so it would feel solid and supported (instead of more like it is floating between two rooms)
• we already have four base cabinets in the dining room thanks to the existing built-ins (so we do not need additional cabinetry/storage)
• because of those existing built-ins, we thought an open bookcase, cabinet, or other form of built-in located less than three feet from the giant wall of existing built-ins would be a bit much
• our threshold would be a lot more seamless (if the half-wall were not there, there’d be an awkward strip of cork flooring between the peninsula cabinet and the dining room floor)

Next up? The door jamb, that ledge on top of the half-wall, and trim. Then comes primer and paint. And THEN it’ll start looking wrapped up – especially once we begin to assemble the peninsula behind it. Of course there is still the whole half-countertop-less kitchen going on (more on that here) but at this point we like to think of that as a minor detail.

Psst- Sherry got in on an interesting discussion about what is in and what is out over on Centsational Girl today. It is certainly one of those fascinating everyone-has-a-distinct-take reads.