Living Room Rebuild, Part 3

After the lighting was installed and the ceiling was still wide open, there were 2 very important issues we needed to solve.
1A. The joists in the ceiling were not level
2A. The upstair's bathroom shower creaked 


Here's how we fixed these two issues.  . .
1B: Before we ripped out the old plaster ceiling there was actually a spot where you could see a slight sag. So before we put the new ceiling back up we knew the joists needed to be fixed. No sense in putting a new coat of paint on an old broken car, right? 


Well, like most things, Justin was the go-to man for this project. But I'll try to explain how he corrected these issues the best I can from my limited understanding of the whole process. Some of the joists were thinner from top to bottom, so Justin added an extra board to thicken the whole joist up. And for the joists that were sagging down too far, he had to shave some of the extra wood off.
* I just made the whole process sound really easy, but it did take some preparation before Justin knew exactly how to correct the problem.


2B: In order to solve the creaking shower, we used Hilti Foam Sealant from Home Depot.

This photo is from the Home Depot website.

This was one of those few times when the whole trial-and-error approach actually worked for us. We knew that the shower was creaking because there were pockets of air under the floorboards, so we thought if we could fill the pockets in then the creaking might actually stop. Well, lo and behold, it actually did! It was surprisingly fairly simple and the steps were as follows:
A. Drive to Home Depot and pick up Hilti Foam Sealant
B. Justin aims can up in to the floorboards and sprays generously
C. Regan runs upstairs to the shower and walks around to see if it creaks
D. Small creaks show themselves 
E. Justin sprays some more foam
                                                                                                             F. Regan walks around in the shower again                                                                                                   and - - VICTORY!!


*Random note: Yes, I did just type in third-person. Don't judge.


Now that our ceiling was straight as a board and our shower was creak-less, we were ready to drywall. Our friend Jon and his cousin Aaron came over to help us put the drywall up. It took a few hours and basically consisted of 2 boys holding the drywall up while the other nailed it into place. I busied myself making lunch for the workers and taking pictures.

Measuring what size to cut the sheet of drywall

The whole process of actually getting the drywall up didn't take too long. The three guys knocked it out in a couple hours. But then came the mudding and sanding. I still have tremors about this part. For those of you that have never done this before let me warn you, the drywall dust gets everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. We lived and breathed drywall dust for several days. Ick. I didn't take too many pictures because I didn't want the little dust particles to destroy my camera.

Jon showing Justin how to tape and mud

Justin taping and mudding

Several days later, once the ceiling was taped and mudded and sanded, we were left with this. Since we were ready to paint now - it was off to Lowes we went!

So has anyone else felt the horrors of drywall dust? How many showers did it take you to get it all out of your hair?