The Genius of Panel Lifts

Who ever invented this contraption is freakin' brilliant. Can you imagine lifting sheets of 5/8" drywall over your head to screw them to a 9 foot ceiling?

I can.

And I am REALLY glad I didn't have to do it.

I rented this panel lift and in a few hours had all the drywall fastened to the ceiling in the kitchen. By myself!

The best part is that the kitchen is really starting to take shape (literally). It is hard to imagine a space when you can see through the 2x4 framed walls and ceiling. When it all gets covered you can see it actually being a kitchen (imagine that...).


The dining room buffet wall getting covered

Just needs a 'little' tape and mud...
Recessed lights will be above the counters and work spaces.

The family visiting the house during the holidays

Alistair, Liesl, Orion, Larry, Sally, Casey, Kyle, Susan, and Brian (Liz taking the pic). Here we are in front of the new house after Thanksgiving.

Somehow this is the only shot of the outside of the house I have...

The pink is especially stunning in this light. Or as we refer to it, 'cooked salmon'!

Odds and ends

Our wonderful window with (most) of the paint scraped off.





Alistair telling ghost stories in the new house. "It was a dark and scary night..."

Actually we have no idea why he likes hanging out in front of the halogen work lights. I keep telling him it won't help his tan unless catching on fire counts...




It snowed like we were somewhere other than Oregon right before Christmas. Here is a nice shot of the 'his and hers' wheel burrows in the back yard.

It's all about the pictures... of the basement.

Down to the basement (notice 95 years worth of grubby hands on the wall)

Proper creaky stairs

Lots of room for shop space.

Big ol' basement.

Nice big original basement windows. The fir frames are still in good condition thanks to big eves on the roof.

The old laundry room...
and the new laundry area.

NEWS FLASH

We passed our electrical cover inspection today! It has been drawn out much longer than we had hoped. But a few snow storms and and a picky inspector later we are good to go. This means we can finally throw up the rest of the insulation and HANG drywall.

Progress...

Into 2009 we go...

LD smooth coating old gross texture...


Liesl scraping a bedroom ceiling (yes it really did look a bit like the moon)



I had the week between Christmas and New years off of work to keep plugging away at the house. The flu hit right about Christmas so I had to lay low for a few days before getting back to it. My goal was to get as far as possible on replacing the plumbing and hang dry wall in the kitchen.

Well thanks to 'Arctic Blast 2008' the electrical work was pushed back 2 weeks and we hadn't passed our inspection to be able to cover the wires... so the was no dry wall hanging.

I got some great help from my buddies Forrest and Ben during the middle of the week and they helped skim coat and paint the bed room ceilings. Liesl bought the bed room paint and as soon as it is up the bed rooms are done! We also worked on smoothing out the living room ceiling and prepping the box beams for primer.

By the middle of my week off I finally hit stride and made nice progress each day.