Day 17 March 3

After church, with David and I feeling refreshed, we started taking down more drywall. I know, I thought all that dumpiness was done too. Well it was until we made our decision from the previous day to extend our duct work. It ended up working out anyways because opening the whole ceiling would help with wiring the light fixture over the dinette table. We ripped and coughed, hauled and dumped, swept and smiled. We’ve learned it’s best to just get all that crud out as soon as you can or else you’re tracking it all over and breathing in its dust.

We continued our wiring work from the previous day, with a good initial realization on David’s part before we got too far. We were connecting all the wires and screwing in the outlet to the box, not thinking about the drywall process. If we screwed the outlet to the box there’s that little lip on the top and bottom that we would need to cut around, with the possibility that the outer plate wouldn’t completely cover it. So we still kept it all connected but instead left the outlet loose and set it inside the box. We finished all the wiring to the peninsula wall but had to stop because we didn’t have the wall up yet.

So it only made sense our next task would be build our second wall! This one was so much easier and enjoyable than the first one. We were able to build it lying down and then lift it into place. We did run into a slight problem when one of the horizontal studs had a significant twist to it. David did some tricks and we worked with it the best we could. We also ran into the problem of once we lifted the wall up it swaying significantly to the sides. We did have a few gaps in some of the connections, so we replaced some of the original screws with bigger and longer wood screws. This completely fixed the problem. Rock solid. We measured once, twice, three times, and then called it a go to nail down. David used his new favorite tool to shoot nails into the concrete, securing the wall. Walls complete!! Well at least as far as building them goes. Our kitchen is beginning to take form :o)