Guess what we did this weekend??

We spent most of the weekend working on the stairs.  A lot of work.  We did get a lot of help though, which we realllly appreciate.

We spent a lot of time this week working on the project.  Monday was drywall, Tuesday my Dad came over to help start mudding and Matt & I did more drywalling, Wednesday was more mudding, Thursday was more mudding and sanding.  Friday we decided we could take a night off. =)

 

 The wall I tore out all by myself while Matt & Dad were mudding

Friday night Kat and I were texting and somehow it got to, if we came to drink their beer and play their Wii, then they would come help drywall on Saturday.  Not sure how that is fair but we went with it. =)  Saturday morning Kat, Kevin, and Johnathan came over for about an hour to help sand & mud.  We got started on the second coat of mud and then Corey came over for about 3 hours to help us with the downstairs ceiling (9+ feet high, we couldn't do that alone) and the last piece over the basement door.  Soooo nice to have all the drywall up!  He stayed to help us finish the first coat of mud and do touch ups on other spots.  Matt & I did some sanding after supper but a lot of spots were still wet so we couldn't get too far.

 

Mudding is fun.  Really.  

End of the workday Saturday.  Considering how big some of these gaps were, this is looking pretty good!

Today we did more mudding (this time with Carter's help).  We're out of mud (again) but we're getting kinda close to being done.  It was still too wet tonight to sand so we'll do that tomorrow and see what spots still need it. 

 

After Sunday's mudding, everything has at least 2 coats, lots of spots have more.

Since we couldn't sand tonight we tore up more carpet.  We have one stair left and then the downstairs landing.  We've been tearing it our gradually as we have dumpster space.  We started looking at carpet today so hopefully soon we can get an install date scheduled.

Overall, I think the project is coming along pretty well.  We've been working A LOT (I figure Matt & I are each around 55 hours in this) and it feels good to have done all this on our own (well, with help).  2 weeks ago (when we were at slats) I was not happy to have even started this project.  Now, I think the drywall & mud even look better than the paneling that was there.  We are close to painting and that part should go fast compared to all the work so far.  Thanksgiving is throwing a kink in our work plans because we're pretty busy all weekend but we'll work around all the family stuff we have going on.  Hopefully we should have all the dust proofing curtains down by Thanksgiving.  That would be a major improvement.  And then we can finally clean up the dust mess for good (it's not bad, especially compared to the plaster dust but it needs a little work). 

Have a short work week, Thanksgiving, lots of time with our families, and feeling good about our project.  Things are pretty good around here. =)