Attic, 26 July 2006

When we bought this house, it was originally advertised as having “3 Bedrooms.” Any of you familiar with reading real estate listings probably know that this really means “2 bedrooms and a large closet” or “1 bedroom with a large basement.”

In our case, it was 2 bedrooms with a large, partially finished, attic. 

The attic is mostly floored (3/4″ floor boards), mostly drywalled (it still needs finished), and mostly wired (three outlets, two light sockets).

But it’s not a bedroom.

Nevertheless, my goal for this holiday break is to get the flooring, and possibly the drywalling, done. Originally we had thought it would be simply finishing the drywall (which I’m not terrible at — I did most of the bathroom) and pulling up the floor boards to put down some 5/8″ plywood. A few hundred bucks, and then some carpeting, and we’re good. We should be able to use it as an office / work area for the things we don’t want Sullivan to get into.  (like Mel’s metal smithing tools or sewing machines. Kids + Butane Torches / Sharp-needles = Bad news for Daddy’s checking account)

We bought some joint compound, finishing tools, and drywall tape from Menards (specifically not from Lowe’s, but the reason why is another post altogether). After some procrastinating, email checking, and Slashdot-reading, I finally got around to starting it. 

Before I continue, I should probably explain something about our house.

Our house was built in the 1920′s by the father of the previous owner (although the wife, who passed on a couple years ago, had been living here). Many of the aspects of this house are testament to the era when it was built. It has a coal room, you can still find ceramic post wiring in a few places, and the kitchen was closed off from the rest of the house. 

The previous owner’s son was a bit of a handyman, I suppose. He had replaced all of the old wiring with modernized wiring, installed new outlets in a few places, put in some faux-parquet flooring, and started on the attic. 

But this house is very quirky — when we renovated the Bathroom last year, the walls / ceiling were uneven, so the bathub shroud installed kind of crooked (only REALLY noticeable on the seams, fortunately). The front door is only 31″ wide, meaning we can’t take someone at their word when they say “oh, it’ll fit in your front door.” The kitchen and bedrooms have windows in places that are very inconvenient when trying to re-arrange furniture or renovate. (And don’t EVEN get me started on the basement…)

Well, in the attic, there are some quirks also. The drywall isn’t mounted flush, so there are places where the gaps between panels is 1/4″ – 1/2″ (if you’ve ever tried finishing drywall before, you know what a PITA that can be). The trusses are spaced in such a way that you can’t screw the drywall panels in an ideal fashion. (My father-in-law tells me that the way around this is to put up “nailing boards” to give the drywall something to attach to). Some of the drywall is cracked on the corners because they used too much torque on their screw-gun. You can mud up most of that, so it’s not a huge deal. To their credit, they at least put up insulation first, so we don’t need to tear it down.

Scott (my father-in-law) came over today to help out with this. It’s not that I’m completely clueless with carpentry, I would just rather have someone around to supervise so that I don’t have to learn things the hard way (as “the hard way” is often very time-consuming, particularly with home improvement projects). 

He looked it over, did some measuring, and figured we need five 4′x8′ panels of 3/4″ MDF/plywood. Fortunately, we don’t need to tear up all the floor boards. They’re pretty sturdy, and he thinks we can get away with just finishing up the areas that are missing. It won’t be perfect, but if we put some sub-flooring on top of it (Luon board or something), and some carpet, it should look fine.

Scott also thinks the drywall is doable. He instructed me yesterday afternoon to just fill in those large gaps with joint compound and let it dry. I was having some trouble with the drywall tape bulging at those holes, and he thought it may have been because there was too much wet joint compound in there. Hopefully this works. If it doesn’t, I might be able to feather it out. If worse comes to worst, we can put up some 1/4″ paneling or something. I’d rather not do that, though – ceiling clearance is tight enough as it is. 

So my homework for now is to clear out those areas, get them all ready to put down the plywood, and he’s coming back on Tuesday to put that flooring down. He said that he should be able to come down once a week for a while to help get these projects done. I really appreciate it, and I think it’ll be good for Sullivan to see his grandpa more often too.

I’ll get some more progress pics up once we get some things done.