An Accident of Hope

3.27.2006

“What were we thinking?” Weekly Update #2

Or; Arch you glad I didn’t say banana?

If you’re paying attention, you’ll remember that this is what our kitchen/dining room looked like at the end of last week’s demolition derby. This week the plan was to create an arch into the kitchen that matches the arch in the living room, and rock the exposed walls. Doesn’t that sound cool? Rock the walls? Like we’re throwing a party or something. Like there’s going to be live music. Yeah. We’re going to rock the walls, alright.

My parents arrived around 10 AM and Julia insisted on spending some time with Grandpa first. Last week he got right to work as soon as he arrived, and then got too messy to hold Julia, and boy was she upset. This time as soon as she saw him she started leaning toward him and buzzing her lips at him. So, baby break. Then mom asked what we were going to accomplish. I told her that we were building an arch into the kitchen and she asked if we were going to be building an arch into the bedrooms. I told her no and she went: Oh. In THAT tone of voice. That tone which lets you know that she disagrees with your reasoning but doesn’t want to say anything. So then Dad said: what, you think I should build them a second arch? And Mom said: Well, it’s not MY house, so it’s not up to ME to say. And that settled that. We were building a second arch. Just like last week when we set out to tear down one wall and ended up tearing down two, this week we planned on building one arch and ended up building two.

Mom and Kristin and Julia left to run errands, and Dad and I got to work. First, he finished framing in the walls. We salvaged the studs from last week’s tear out and used them to finish the new walls. Then we started on the arches. Dad held up the plywood for the kitchen arch to the living room arch and I traced the arch so we could get the same slope. Then he cut out the two arch pieces. After I helped him get them hung on the wall, I started screwing in the support blocks while he went off to start cutting out the pieces for the second arch.

After we got the supports up for the second arch we realized that the arch was a little… shall we say, lopsided. So Dad took his saw and started shaving away at the arch. For a while there I was worried that it would be a bit like when you’re giving someone a haircut and you realize that one side is longer than the other, so you cut a bit off that side and then you realize that the other side is now longer, so you cut a bit off THAT side and then you realize… and before you know it you’re bald. Thank goodness Dad knew when to stop.

Once the arch forms were up and the supports screwed in, it was time to rock the walls. We started by screwing up a piece of sheetrock and then Dad took his saw and backwards and NOT LOOKING cut out the arch. (Kristin and my Mom and Julia came home in the meantime and were able to observe our work)

After the rock went up then we got to use the fancy-schmancy bendy corner beads. And we started looking around for the taping knives (of which I had lost the 4 in knife, so we had to send Kristin back to the store, which left us some time for goofing off)

After Kristin came back with the 4 inch knives Dad and I got started mudding in earnest. No pictures of that, unfortunately, but here’s a picture of Mom doing her job of holding the tape and the knives. From this blog post you would think that my Mom isn’t very handy, but she is, actually, we just wanted to keep her clean so she could hold Julia.

Speaking of Julia, she was fascinated by all the work going on. She couldn’t take her eyes of Grandpa and all the interesting things he was doing to our house, all the noise he was making, all the things he was knocking over. Boy, my girl doesn’t miss a beat. Kristin had a bought a little 2 in knife just in case we needed one that small, and so I wanted to set up a little photo op with Julia and the little knife (btw, for those of you NOT familiar with construction tools, these knives I’m talking about aren’t cutting knives, though they can be sharp, the one we gave Julia wasn’t). I thought I would hand her the knife and she would wave it around, maybe try to stick it in her mouth or on someone’s clothes, but she knew just what to do with that knife and mud. She turned right around and stuck it on the wall! It was as if she was glad that we finally realized what a big help she could be.

Finally, both arches and all the raw places in the walls (with one notable exception, but we’re going to do something else there, I don’t know what, yet, but it won’t be drywall) were slathered in mud and tape, the floor was a mess, and Grandpa and Julia fell asleep in the chair.

When Grandma and Grandpa finally left, here’s what our house looked like:




Up next: sanding (ugh) texturing (not so bad) priming and painting.