The repairs: Part I

Josh and I are beginning to think that the house is cursed. That, and that the previous owners were incapable of doing anything right.

The first project we decided to attack was drywalling. More specifically the closet ceiling in the bedroom. A part of the ceiling was bowing out, so it should have been an easy job. Remove drywall. Replace. Done. Instead, it has been a nightmare. First off, for some reason, the previous owners  had decided to nail the drywall pieces into the support beams instead of using drywall screws. So tearing the ceiling down was all sorts of fun. After tearing the ceiling down we realized that instead of using fiberglass insulation, they had decided to use large pieces of styrofoam. In addition to that, we realized that the previous piece was sagging because the owners had not followed the cardinal rule about drywalling; each piece has to start and end on a stud so that the edges are screwed in rather than flailing around in midair (what were they thinking???). Because of this, we had to keep cutting sideways to find a stud. Unfortunately, this also means that the edges of the other pieces in the ceiling are not secured to studs, meaning we have to keep tearing down drywall (Whhhhhyyyyyyyy?).

At this point, we decide to stop tearing down the ceiling and start putting up pieces of drywall. When trying to put up the first piece, we found out that the previous owners used a different thickness for that ceiling than the other ceilings (the ones we bought drywall pieces for) so we had to go haul more home. Then after cutting the right size (Josh is now a cutting pro :P) we find out that for some reason the owners had not cut the previous pieces straight (wtf), so the piece we have isn't going to fix, which means more drywall being cut out.

Look at Josh hard at work :)

After finally getting a few pieces of drywall up we're feeling a bit better. And we proceed in cutting the rest of the ceiling. We finally cut to a point where, amazingly, the drywall was actually screwed into the beams. After a mini celebration, we cut the final piece that should have completed the length of the ceiling we pulled down. Until we found out that again, they had not made a straight cut. No big problem, we'll just cut off 1/8 of an inch off part of the piece and then eventhing would finally fit. That was until we looked up and saw....

Oh the horrors!!

 Apparently the piece put up by the former owners hadn't quite reached the edge of the ceiling. Instead of patching it up, they decided to use expanding foam. -_______- In fact, expanding foam seems to be their quick fix of choice all over the house. So when we have finally gotten to a edge that we could have kept, we now have to but more of the ceiling until we can get to the next stud. But that can wait until next weekend.

My new house key :D

With the drywalling started, the next project on the list was re-keying the locks. Josh has done plenty of this while working at a hardware store, so this should have been a short, easy project. We bought a re-keying set and set off to work. An hour later, we still have not yet been able to pop the cylinder out of the first doorknob. Frustrated, we take the doorknob into Home Depot, where the re-key guy was finally able to pop it out. So we manage to get the doorknob and deadbolt in the front door re-keyed. On to the side door, back door, and garage door. None of the cylinders want to pop out of these doorknobs. Josh, meanwhile, is about to break something out of frustration. We take those doorknobs back to Home Depot and even the re-key guy can't pop the cylinders out (and boy did he try). According to him, he's never seen a doorknob that he wasn't able to pop the cylinders out of. Yay for us... So after wasting an entire afternoon, it turns out we need to get some new locks and re-key those. 

On the bright side, we manage to re-caulk the bathtub without blowing anything up XD

More repair jobs to come...