Hanging drywall is harder than it looks .... when it rains

What was originally planned to be a weekend activity ended up being an exhausting task that took over a week!

We decided to hang drywall in our garage because the garage was very dangerous without it!  There were pointy-ends of rusty nails jutting into the garage and spiders crawling everywhere inside the foundation.  Also, it was just hideous to look at.
Cousin Yao volunteered to come down to LA for a few days in November (of 2011.. this blog post is a bit overdue) and help us out with the drywall! horray!

The plan to install the dry wall seemed very easy:
1. Rent a truck
2. Buy drywall and drive it home
3. Install the drywall
4. Joint compound the seams and nails.
5. Let joint compound dry, then joint compound again.
6. Sand down the joint compound.

It should really take a weekend to complete this list.  Maybe a couple extra days to wait for the joint compound dry, but that should be about it.

A few days before Yao's arrival in LA, we tried to rent a truck to gather all the supplies so everything will be ready-to-go when Yao arrives.  Home Depot trucks are $20 for 75 minutes, which is pretty good and easier than getting a Uhaul, since we are getting the drywall from Home Depot anyways.  Jeff called all the Home Depots within the vicinity but all the trucks were taken!  (the truck rentals are on a first-come-first-serve basis).
Jeff finally found a Home Depot that was far away, but had a truck available.
It was around 7:15pm when Jeff called and the store closes at 9pm, so Jeff high-tailed it over to Home Depot and got there around 7:45pm.  Unfortunately, the store employee was slow and didn't get the truck rented to Jeff until 8:15pm!!  Remember the store closes at 9pm?  So Jeff had only 45 minutes to drive to truck home, unload the dry wall, and drive the truck back.

Like a maniac, Jeff quickly drove the gigantic truck home and unloaded the heavy drywall off the truck bed onto our drive way, with the help of our roommate.  Then Jeff high-tailed it back to Home Depot and returned the truck at 8:53pm!  Amazing!

In all the truck-rental madness, we forgot to use our 10% off coupon to pay for the dry wall. =(

The weekend rolls around and Yao arrives.  On Saturday, Yao and Jeff spent all afternoon (~4-5 hours) figuring out how to install the drywall.  There were issues with the screw not screwing in completely into the studs.  After 2 more trips to Home Depot to get missing supplies and the proper length screws, the boys figured out how to efficiently install the dry wall, and installed a grand total of 3 sheets of drywall by the end of the afternoon!

On Sunday morning, it is raining a bit but the boys begin working on the garage anyways.  It took about 10 minutes to install the first sheet of drywall, so it was expected that it should take no more than 2 hours to install the remaining 10 sheets of drywall.
Of course, all good things don't last long.
It started raining harder so I suggested bringing in all the drywall from the driveway, to prevent it from getting wet  (drywall is pretty much chalk powder with glue, so when it gets wet, it warps and melts).
The drywall is very heavy, so Jeff and Yao moved the sheets, 1 by 1, into the garage.  After all the sheets were moved into the garage, they realized that water was entering the garage and was getting the drywall wet!  So they pushed the drywall, 1 by 1, back into the garage further, but the water traveled into the garage faster than they can move the drywall.  They tried to prop up the drywall on some 2x4 wood blocks, but the water flooding into the garage was too high.
They then decided to put the sheets on top of the ping pong table! (Noooooo!).
To test if the ping pong table's hinges were strong enough, Yao did the "Yao test" by laying on the ping pong table and see if it could support him.  The ping pong table supported him just fine so they started loading the drywall sheets on top of the ping pong table.
3/4 of the way through, the ping pong table collapsed!  (The ping pong table is a goner.  So tragic).

Water was still entering the garage, so they decided to move all the sheets of drywall to the back of the garage.  Yao figured that should buy them 1 hour to think.  So they moved the drywall, 1 by 1, to the back of the garage.  Before the sheets were all moved, the water reached the back of the garage!
At this point, our roommate suggested that they use 2 coffee tables (which were already in the garage) to hold up the drywall.  That was a great idea, since the coffee tables are strong enough to support the drywall and are high enough off the ground to avoid the flooding.
So Jeff and Yao moved the remaining sheets of drywall off the ping pong table, moved the ping pong table out of the way, then loaded all the sheets of drywall, 1 by 1, onto the coffee tables.
At this point, the boys were sloshing through water in the garage.
There was about 4 inches of water in the garage and a lot of our items in the garage got water damaged, including the some of the drywall.

No more work on the garage could be done on Sunday because it was just raining too hard.  (Since when does it rain so much and so hard in LA??  It was just not meant to be!).  Also, the boys were exhausted from spending the last couple of hours ferrying 10 sheets of drywall all over the garage.

The weekend ended with only 3 sheets of drywall installed.

Yao was in town until Thursday, so Jeff decided to take Wednesday off at work, so the two can work on the garage.  Thankfully, on Wednesday, it was bright and sunny.  Some of the drywall was warped, but we wanted to work with what we had, rather than go rent another damn Home Depot truck just for a couple of sheets of drywall.

A view of the boys hanging drywall.
On the right wall, that's how the entire garage walls looked before we installed the drywall.

As expected, the installation of the drywall moved pretty quickly and all the sheets of drywall were hung by the end of the day. 
Of course, something bad always has to happen.
Turns out, during the initial calculation, we did not include a buffer and we were 1 sheet of drywall short.  It was already Wednesday evening, so this problem needed to be figured out on a different day.

On Saturday, Jeff and I went to Home Depot and purchased 1 sheet of drywall.  We had no intention of renting a damn truck, so we borrowed an employee's utility knife, and sliced the drywall into 3 small pieces  (I can always use joint compound to "glue" these 3 pieces back together!).  We loaded the 3 small pieces into Jeff's Camry, drove home, and installed the 3 pieces on the dry wall.
Finally!!
After an entire week, we finally finished hanging drywall in the garage!

All that was left to do was:
1. Joint compound the drywall seams
2. Apply drywall tape onto the seams (I went the cheap route and bought the non-adhesive tape, which means that I need to use extra joint compound as the "adhesive").
3. Joint compound over the drywall tape, and over the nail holes.
4. Wait for the joint compound to dry.  (this requires waiting overnight).
5. Joint compound again.
6. Wait for the joint compound to dry.  (more overnight waiting)
7. Sand down the joint compound until the wall is smooth.

I slowly did these steps myself over the course of several weeks.  Jeff helped joint compound some of the hard-to-reach areas, and he did the sanding.

Joint compounding would have been MUCH easier if some of the drywall was not warped.  And maybe if I was not 5-6 months pregnant.

In the process of joint-compounding the drywall seams

Finally! The garage is complete!
The walls look great now, and I think there is less spiders in the garage now too.
If we want, we can now paint the walls, but we are still undecided if we want to bother painting or not.

 

The finished product: A drywalled garage.  The joint compound is completely dry and sanded.

We still need to clean all the debris from the garage, but won't be easy, since we will need to remove all the contents from the garage first.
Once we get all the debris cleaned up, we can start putting everything in their proper place in the garage, and hopefully purchase more racks and storage solutions for the garage.
It's going to look great!