18. Drywall and 2023 update

Hey, it's been a while.  I'm still working on the castle, all alone, every day. At 74, the old body and mind are starting to slow down, though. We've been living in the house for a couple of years. The kitchen, all 3 bedrooms, and 4 bathrooms are done. The living room just needs carpet. The basement theater is also nearly done (a chapter on that later). Still left to finish: our offices, theater lobby, gym, and "Nautilus'-themed gameroom. So I've still got several years of work ahead.

This is a big house and it took a lot of drywall -- over 1000 sheets. Most of it is standard 1/2-inch gypsum board, but some of it had to be 5/8-inch (for ceilings), and I was also able to get some sound-absorbing sheets.

But before the drywall goes up, you need to put in insulation. For most of the exterior walls, I just used the standard fiberglass batts. My walls are 6 inches thick, so I used R-21 insulation. I hoped that modern-day insulation would keep my heating bills within reason, and that has proven true after living here several years. 

For some of the interior walls, I used a denim material, which is much more satisfying to handle. This is made from old denim jeans, which are shredded and formed into 16-inch-wide batts.  It's more expensive than fiberglass, but it's easy on the skin and tears easily to the right length.  I used this in walls between rooms to help with sound insulation.

For the ceilings, I decided to go with a spray-on expanding foam insulation. This completely seals the space between the rafters, creating what's known as a "hot roof". There is no roof ventilation, and all the heat from the sun is either reflected or absorbed by the roof. The advantage of this is that the attic space is the same temperature as the rest of the house, which means the A/C equipment, water pipes, etc. do not have to live in the harsh environment of the typical attic. This type of insulation is expensive, but I'm very glad we did it this way.

I'll take a moment to mention one of the best investments I've made regarding equipment. I found this "Handy Herman" lift on eBay, and it has proven to be invaluable. When you take a long time to build a house, renting lift equipment can get extremely expensive. I was able to buy this thing for less than a month of rental cost for a scissor lift, and I can always sell it for the same price I paid.

It has outrigger struts for stability, and goes up amazingly high. The spray-foam operator used it for almost all of his work, which saved me the cost of him having to set up scaffolding. I was also able to use it for drywall placement, taping, and painting, As well as window installation and trim. I've had it nearly a decade now, and will have a hard time letting it go!

On to drywall. There's not much to putting up the sheets -- you just nail or screw them to the studs. I bought a manual drywall lift for raising the sheets to the 10-foot ceilings, and of course I've got the Handy Herman for the higher locations.

Taping and "mudding" drywall is dreaded by many DIYers, but I don't really mind it. I use fiberglass tape on the joints, and a minimal-shrink, low dust, type of drywall compound. I use two passes of compound on the joints, a day apart. Even with "low shrinkage" compound, the grooves between the sheets still recede on the first coat. I try for a smooth finished look on the second coat, requiring little or no sanding.

After the taped joints have cured, it's time for my trademark "Sachs texture".  This consists of nothing more than dipping my hand in the bucket of drywall compound, slapping it on the wall, waiting about 5 minutes, and knocking it down with a wide drywall blade.

The tricky part is trying to have no obvious patterns  as you slap it on with your hand. (Such as hand-print shapes!)

People seem to like this effect a lot more than the machine-blown spatter that you see in tract homes.

Here's my wife's office all textured and ready to paint.