Smooth sailing with smooth ceilings

   The part of the renovation that we were least looking forward to (living through) was drywall. Josh has many childhood memories of his dad spackling and sanding, spackling and sanding, and the mess it made and the irritation it brought to the family. But if you're going to move walls, there will be new drywall, and new seams to be spackled, and you must accept that there will be drywall dust. 

   Drywall dust was already lightly covering the first floor, but the biggest storm of dust was sure to make the early dust feel like a joke: we decided to un-popcorn the ceilings. And not just in the kitchen, where we were going to have to patch the ceilings pretty significantly anyway, but the whole first floor. Why would we put ourselves through this potential blizzard of dust while living in the house? Because it was now or never, and having just the kitchen have smooth ceilings would make the other areas feel shabby and probably make us regret that we hadn't done it. So we went for it!

The old ceiling texture and some the first swipes 
of smoothing out the ceilings.                              

   Thankfully, we had a recommendation for a professional drywaller, Richard, who told us he could get the job done in five days with minimal dust, thanks to his vacuum sander and 50 years of experience. We thought this was a little boastful, but really liked that he had so much experience (and reminded me of my uncles) and arranged to use him. 

   Rye let us know from the early planning stages of the renovation that he is allergic to drywall dust and did not want to be here for the drywall stage. Getting the kids out of the house so they wouldn't be tracking first-floor dust to the other two levels was a great idea, and much thanks to their grandparents and my sister-in-law, we arranged for them to visit family for four nights/five days. 

   We prepared the house by stapling a tarp to block off the steps to the second floor and taping around the entrance to the basement and resolving not to use that door for the week, but instead to use the outside door to enter the basement. So this means when we got up in the morning and went downstairs to get a cup of coffee (before Richard and his helper got here at 7:30 a.m.), we had to go down the second floor stairs, through the tarp, out to the garage to get the creamer, out the front door, around the back of the house, and in the basement's back door to the coffee maker. At night, this meant carrying a high-powered flashlight with us as we went out the back, around the side yard, up the deck steps and into the kitchen where we had left a single lightbulb glowing. It felt silly and funny, and like one of those short memory bursts you think you'll never forget because it is so unusual and so ordinary at the same time. 

   The other major downside for the week was the inability to run the air conditioning. Not that Richard was restricting us from using the air conditioning, but all that dust would have gotten sucked up and spit out throughout the house, making it ten times worse. I thought I would be able to convince Josh to let us use it on the days that weren't major sanding days, but he felt pretty strongly about protecting our already-not-so-great HVAC system. So during that week of mid-90s temperatures in mid-July, we lived in a warm and humid basement by day and had all our windows and balcony door open with high-powered fans blowing some circulation in at night. It was unpleasant for sure, but not disgusting. One evening around 8:30, Josh asked me for a walk and I made a face that said, "are you crazy?!?" His response was, "you're not going to feel any hotter than you do now," which turned out to be true, because when the sun goes down and you're in the park there's a nice, cool humidity and a dusky pink sky that really is very refreshing. 

   Richard truly was amazing. He finished by 2 p.m. every day, and finished on Thursday instead of Friday. He would chat a little but also let you (COUGH *Josh*) know it was time to get to work. The day when he sanded the popcorn ceilings was not any dustier than any other day--I only noticed they had been done because I looked up! 

Smooth ceilings everywhere!

   Getting the drywall and ceilings done gave me a total boost of energy toward the project, and made me a little antsy to see the next big stages take place: priming/painting walls, cabinet installation, and eventually, countertops! Popcorn detail is less than a quarter of an inch in depth, and yet our ceilings now feel 4" taller, and all that white makes the house look so crisp. Totally worth a week of sweltering heat and more dust/mess on the floors that are going to be replaced!

The left side is what the floors looked like when Richard
was done, and then how they looked after I wiped them 
down with a wet rag so I could walk barefoot again.