First of all, sorry we’ve been MIA this week. There’s been a lot going on in our lives…from some scary medical stuff (don’t worry, everything turned out okay) to simply catching up after being gone all weekend to Kentucky. Plus, we had been at a stopping point where we needed to really regroup before we could make any more major progress.

So, this post is a bit delayed, but still relevant, I promise. Not a whole lot has been done since we worked on this.

As a refresher, when we last updated you on the kitchen, things looked like this:

So, lately our nights (and weekends) are full of kitchen projects. And that means when we set out to spend some time together a couple weekends ago, we did it with a power drill and drywall square in hand. A little date-night dry-walling action, you might say.

Luckily, we typically work pretty well together. Although I’ll admit that handling heavy, slightly fragile pieces of plaster isn’t really my best test in terms of how great a helper I am.

At one point, Hubs even said he prefers to work with his brother instead of me, which may or may not have hurt my feelings a bit…but I quickly admitted that yes, his brother is better help in terms of big, two-person jobs, but I’m maybe a better “helper” for things he’s working on by himself—sticking around for little things like handing him screws, going to get tools, measuring, marking, cleaning up as we go along, holding, etc.

He agreed with that, and even said I’m not that bad at helping with big jobs…I’m just not as strong, nor do I have the technical know-how in terms of moving and carrying things that comes from delivering big heavy furniture together for years.

Plus, I have to stop and take photos to share with you guys, which sometimes annoys him. 🙂

We started re-dry-walling (I made that up as a word I think…) on the long wall over by where the fridge used to be. The first piece went up pretty well because there were only a few holes to cut for outlets and other “wall warts.”

We didn’t put this long piece all the way into the corner because there will be a pantry there, so the wall won’t show at all…and we could use scraps of drywall at the end instead of a nice long piece with no seams. It will save us a little money and a lot of time with the mudding and sanding later on. Always thinking, that husband of mine.

Wyatt used a small piece of the new flooring as a spacer to ensure we held the drywall up slightly from the floor since we may still need to replace some or all of the subfloor and we’ll want a little bit of clearance.

 

See those lines where the screws are? That was one of my jobs to mark those with the square so Wyatt could quickly and accurately put screws in without having to stop and make sure he hit the studs. See, I’m helpful. I swear.

We also had to replace the drywall of the inside of our bump out window.

I took advantage of having a tiny bit more clearance to paint the sides of the trim I hadn’t been able to reach before. Score for quick thinking on that, I say.

After that, we added the pieces on the other side of the window, and a small section on top of the window. It was starting to look like a real room in there again!

Finally, the day ended with one wall almost done…

(We saved the area behind the pipes because it’s another place we can use small scraps we’ll have leftover from the other walls, like we did behind the fridge.)

We even made a little bit of progress on the other walls.

You can see the little patches he added over the nook corner where the soffit came out…

And the long strip beside the door into the laundry room.

Three cheers for progress, huh? I have to say it’s good to cheer for some things when I’m getting pretty tired of washing dishes, filling up coffee pots, and rinsing produce…all in my bathroom sink.

We had to stop and wait for some other unfinished projects (prepping the duct work to add the range hood on the short wall, etc.) but we’re hoping to tackle the rest of the drywall this weekend.

And then, the really fun part starts…the mudding and sanding of all the seams. Ick. I’ve been dreading this part the whole time. But the good news is that shortly after that…we’ll be ready to start building things back…installing cabinets even! Woohoo! But for now, we’re still looking at a room that looks like this:

So, ever had a drywall date with your love? I think all this DIY is good for our relationship…it forces us to work on teamwork while bonding and problem solving together. But there are certainly fights along the way…and that makes me thankful for good days and happy nights of progress!

What are your best tips for working together on projects?