Home repair update

It's been awhile since I've told you how my house is coming. I believe the last thing I told you was that I hung my ceiling fan by myself.

I got the radiators hooked backed up and the system refilled with water. Considering that I'd not dealt with radiator systems before I'm pretty happy.

I finished putting up the drywall on the bedroom walls and ceiling with special care to go around the radiator pipes, outlets, and light fixtures. Then I went on to do the walls and ceiling in the hallway. Because I raised the ceiling I had to put some boards on the ceiling to give the upper part of the wall something to brace against. I failed to put leveling boards on the ceiling so there's some warping to the hall ceiling.

Back in the bedroom I put a window shelf under each window. It gave me a reason to use the tiny nail gun that came with my air compressor. The big issue there was cutting the boards so they were flush against the window and stuck out from the wall the same distance clear across. That was tricky because warping in the wall meant that the distance from the window to the face of the wall is different on the left side of the window than on the right. Then more drywall above and to the sides of the window.

Then I got a local unemployed guy named Cliff to come do the mudding. I gave it a shot myself and realized quickly that I shouldn't be touching it. I'm better than I was, but that's still a long way from good. But, I'm realizing that there's a reason Cliff is unemployed. He's not real good at showing up when he says he will. Nor, for that matter, showing up at all. Luckily he's cheap.

He's gotten the three layers of mud and the sanding done on the drywall, but he's also doing some patch work on the plaster over the brick and filling in those spaces between the drywall and the brick wall. If he shows up three more times he'll be done. The trick is getting him to show.