Squeaky squashes a squeak...nothing like Horton Hears a Who...

Well I've emerged from my white, dusty hell and I cannot find the words to express my happiness. As you can see here, the drywall is done:

Here are my top 5 lessons learned when it comes to mudding drywall:

1. Hire someone. Seriously. Of all the things I've done on this reno, this is the only one where I would pay to have someone else do this. It's just so dusty and sweaty and if you get a pro they will have it done in 1/3 the time and 1/3 the mess.

2. Less is more - and then less again. The more you put on, the more you have to take off. That sounds simple but doing it in practice is not so simple. Still, if you're doing your own mudding, try to remember it.

3. Hire someone. Have you not seen on all the Holmes and DIY Disaster shows where the hosts leave the mudding to pros or the homeowner? There's a reason for that. The hosts know better and want nothing to do with it.

4. Buy a vacuum attachment for sanding. You can get these most places and basically your sanding block (the pro kind that uses sheets of wire mesh) hooks into a Shop-Vac. Really cuts down on the dust (it's insidious) and helps with the breathing.

5. Hire someone. I shouldn't need to explain this anymore.

With the walls done, I looked to the floor. I had two issues to deal with - a squeak and a dip. The floor had a wicked squeak and now was the time to fix it. Basically impossible to fix once the tile is down. Also, there was a dip on one side of the room where the floor went down about 1/8 of an inch. This could be solved with some self-leveling compound or a scratch coat of mortar, either way I was going to deal with the squeak first.

The first thing to do was find the joists beneath the floor because you won't get much satisfaction from screwing straight through the floor and not actually getting the joist. I measured off the wall, used a stud sensor and figured out where a joist should be. I then put a 2 1/2 inch flooring screw in and went downstairs to check my accuracy. If my goal was to put the screw exactly between two joists, I would have won first prize. As it was, that was not what I was going for and so did not make the podium. On the plus side, I could now measure the distance from the screw to the joists, go back upstairs and layout for where the joists really were.

Knowing that I was actually hitting the mark now, I drove in about 20 - 30 screws and lo and behold the squeaks were gone. And there was a bonus too; the floor was now level. Looks like the floor bowed up in the middle over time which caused both the squeaks and the floor to drop off on one side. Once I screwed the floor tight to the joists, the floor leveled out. So, no need for self leveling compound and one little victory for Team Squeaky.

With the floor squeak free and level, I had to patch a few depressions that resulted from my wonderful experience with glue remover many posts ago. A little Planipatch (a patching compound) mixed fairly dry, spread with a tongue depressor and leveled with a 5 inch trowel and the damage was patched:

So now that the floor is all ready, it's time to move on to Ditra - the orangest orange you have ever seen and tomorrow's entry...