The drywall from last week was delivered to the second story, and by this week most of it was applied. The upstairs bathroom drywalling, using special more-water-resistant panels, is delayed pending arrival of taps and pressure balances that are put inside the walls. But the bathtub has arrived, and now clutters the working floor area as it comes in an enormous cardboard box.
A second load of drywall arrives and was delivered to the front door. The crane had to lift the sheets over the parked car along the curb.
The construction crew has a wonderful yellow lifter for the drywall panels. In the pic below, a pre-trimmed-to-fit-the-ceiling panel is put on the tilted arms of the lifter…
The arms are reset to be level…
And the big crank is turned to easily lift the panel up to the ceiling …
The panel is carefully positioned tightly against the first panel lifted into place…
This lifting gizmo is a wonderful body-saver. Lifting sheets of drywall, hundreds of them in a house, is heavy tiring work. It is awkward to raise them above your head and hold them in place. Back injuries and falls are common, to say nothing of sore necks and shoulders.
The arms hold the panel in position while the drywall screw gun is used to screw in the screws and make the dimple in the surface of the panel to hold the finishing coats of plaster…
The drywall gun is neat. It is quite long, so in many cases the crew can simply reach up and screw, without climbing a bench or work scaffold. But the main ceilings here are 9 1/2 ‘ so short scaffolding is used in many areas. Some drywall crews wear stilts on their feet so they are 8’ tall.
The gun uses a plastic ribbon of screws all in alignment …
The screws were nicely coiled up in a plastic bucket…
It takes mere seconds for a worker to insert half a dozen screws. Ziiiip. Ziiiip. Ziiiip. Ziiiip.
Where there are to be ceiling LED pot lights, the crew marks the spot and using a special drill rather like a drafting compass. The centre of the drill bit is put in the measured-to-be-the-centre-point of the light fixture can, and a rotating arm with a cutting blade zips around a few times to make a perfect circular hole:
Just a few hours after the drywall delivery, all the ceiling areas on the ground floor are done, and some of the bulkheads too.
The rented yellow drywall lifter was returned to the tool rental agency that same day.
It will take several days to do all the fussy little bits, along the sides of the bulkheads, into some tricky corners and doorways, and the oddly-angled back addition.
This week the crew will drywall the wall studs, apply metal corner beads and finishing strips, and start to “mud” the cracks and screw holes. Here’s some drywall tape for long joints, and a drill attachment for stirring the big pots of premix mud:
