Starting on Sheetrock

People are always asking, "So when do you think you'll be done with your house?" or "Do you have a date set to be done yet?". Oh how I hate these questions. We are not in the process of buying a house. There is no "closing date". We aren't paying someone to build our house. So again there is no "finish date". It will be done when it gets done. We're going just as fast as we can. To be honest we ALL wish it was done yesterday! But it's not. We are fully aware of how long it's taken us. But we didn't get a loan, we are paying for everything in cash. We are not in debt! We are going as fast as we can and we are tired!  But it is coming along. And so we don't have a "date" or a goal. Although I am starting to tell everyone, "by the end of the year". Our landscaping probably won't be done, the cement we want poured to the back shed and our driveway might not be done either. But I am hoping the inside will be done. I'm hoping my walls will be painted, my home decor will be on the walls, we will have more than 1 finished bathroom, I will be curling my toes in carpet (something we haven't had for 3 years now) and I will have a "real" kitchen again. All before Christmas is what I would really like. But time will tell.....

What I would really, really like but something I just recently voiced to my kids is that I would really like our upstairs to be done by the time school starts. As of today (July 8th) school starts up again 5 weeks from today or 35 days. I would love it to be all painted, have a working bathroom and carpet. We are so close I don't see why it couldn't be done but something always seems to come up, whether its a different kind of expense, like Kory's truck breaking down, so we have a lack of funds, or time getting away from us with other things that need to be done.

And so this week I was really hoping that we could get the whole upstairs sheetrocked.

And so on Monday night, July 8th we all began working in Maddies bedroom.  We didnt bother with the sheetrock lift since we had all the kids help. We lifted that sheetrock high and then Kory and Hunter would screw it in. 

Emily went around sweeping up the insulation mess. 

We let a friend borrow our sheetrock lifter we use for the lower sheets and he "forgot" to bring it back to us. But we got all the upper pieces in.

Even Brayden took his turn putting in screws. 

Maddie and Emily took turns drawing our lines so the boys had a refrence where the studs were underneath.  

Miss Kylie was our girl who kept our hands full of screws. 

On Monday we were able to get all the upper sheets up in Maddies bedroom. We got 2 upper sheets done in her closet. We realized we had forgotten to blow in insulation behind the bathtub, which share's the wall in the closet. Uggghhh... Kory wasn't quite done with the plumbing the 1st time we had the insulation machine. We figure we'd finish that wall the 2nd time we had the machine but we forgot. Oops! So we hung one sheet in Emily's bedroom and one sheet in the family room and then it was time to call it quits.   

Tuesday nights are a hard night to work. We've got scouts and mutual. This week everyones activities started an hour earlier so we really didn't have time to work. But Kory and I did install all the electrical boxes in the dining room area and the office. 

On Wednesday the girls and I worked most of the day. We were able to get the office and dining room electircal boxes wired. Now we just need Kory to put in the can lights and we can wire them next. 

We also had to cut little squares of insulation and then shoot them where the top and bottom floor meet. What you see above Emily's head in the picture below. Emily went around and foamed the edges for us. 

Maddie putting the pieces in.  

I sat on the floor and cut, cut and cut. 

Wednesday night we had pack meeting. So once again we didn't get as much as we would have liked done. We did get our toe lifter back so we hung the 3 bottom sheets in Maddie's room and another sheet in the family room. We won't be able to hang anymore sheets until we insulate that last little bit.  

The kids and I spent Thursday getting ready for our last family reunion of the year. We are going camping in Alton tomorrow and are in charge of dutch oven potatoes. So we spent the day packing, finding all our camping gear, slicing potatoes and cutting up onions. We are going to work a 1/2 day tomorrow but need to be in Cedar about 3pm. Although we insulated last weekend we quickly realized we are still loosing a lot of our cool air into the attic. We were able to insulate one side of the stairs but not the other. And so we haven't been running our AC this week like we had planned. Kory and I aren't sleeping well due to how warm it is at night. And so instead of finishing the sheetrock on Friday we decided we're going to rent the insulation machine for in the morning. 

Saturday morning, Kory was up and gone about 5:30am. He had left to Cedar to buy another case of insulation so we can actually finish the upstairs and attic for good this time. At 8am we began.... 

We first went around the upstairs and finished blowing insulation around the bathtub and little crevices we had missed the 1st time. And then Kory climbed into the attic over the 1st part of the house and we added more to get that higher R value than what Sun Roc had done several months ago. When we were about 1/2 done the family switched jobs. Hunter climbed into the attic while Maddie and Kylie kept the insulation coming.  

Look at that cute little girl doing her best to help!

That left Emily, Kory and I to start on sheetrocking. 

When the insulation was done everyone helped with the sheetrock. 

We ALL worked until about 1pm and then we began hitting the showers. We still had to return the insulation machine and be to the Cedar Temple at 3:30/4. Wow did we work well together. We were able to finish Maddies room and closet 100% We also hung sheetrock in Emily/Kylies Room. So it and the closet is also done 100%. 

I was hoping to get the whole upstairs sheetrocked this week, we didn't. but we still did good. We worked almost every single night plus 1/2 day Friday and we got a lot accomplished. We have 2-3 sheets hung in the family room and 2 sheets hung in the bathroom. Hoping to get both rooms finished early next week so that we can get our tape and texture guy back out. It will take him a few days to get his part done and then we can paint which will also take a few days, hang light fixtures, install all the electrical covers and hopefully get our carpet going. We've got just under 30 days before school starts. We can do this!