The end of drywall work is in sight

Day 14

So today is officially day 14 of working on the basement. After going back to work for two days (Thurs. and Fri.), I got back to it yesterday and today. It’s all about drywall finishing now. Taping, mudding, and sanding is the meaning of life until it’s done. This is by far my least favorite part of home improvement. It’s a pain and because I am not great at it, I need to do a few more cycles of mudding/sanding than the pros.

I bought a new sander to help and since we didn’t hire out the job, I thought a $30 tool to help things go faster was justified. Turns out, it wasn’t up to the job. The sander is manual and you can use screens or regular paper. It has an attachment that allows you to hook it up to a shop vac and it sucks around the sander as you work. It works pretty well, but not for a project this size. So after trying to do an initial sanding of the walls with it yesterday, I gave in and rented a power sander from Depot. I have used these a few times before and they are great, but you need to be very careful because they can be very aggressive. In the picture below you can see the manual sander with the attached hose as well as the power sander.

The sander gets heavy after a while and my arms as well as my back are killing me after two days of using this, but it is way quicker. It attaches to a vacuum you get when you rent the sander and for $30/day, it’s a pretty good deal.

So where am I at? I have put the last coats of mud on and have finished about 95% of the sanding. Mostly just touch up work remains that I need to complete tomorrow morning before the drywall primer goes up. When I return the sander tomorrow, I will be picking up a few gallons of paint for the ceiling and walls. The main room will get painted first because the stairway and soffit are a pain. Lots of small areas that I need to baby… sanding, mudding, sanding, etc. I am betting the stairway won’t be painted until Sat. 🙁

Protip: To make sure your mudding job is done, go around the walls with a high-powered work light set an angle to the wall. This will highlight any imperfections in the mud job before you prime. Credit goes to my father-in-law for teaching me this.

My goal was to have everything except the carpet done when I go back to work Wed., but I don’t want push things at this stage. Taking your time and getting the mudding just right makes trim and paint go so much easier.

Problem area

When finishing a basement or doing any large project, you always run into a few snags or unexpected things. I’ll share two of mine… extending the air ducts to meet the new soffit and returning the soffit into the stairs.

First, the air ducts. The air duct that ran next to the i-beam had two vents into the basement. You can see them in the first picture below. Once we put up the soffit 2×2 framing, these vents needed to be extended the 2″ (1.5 for the 2×2 and .5 for the drywall… we used 5/8″ on the soffit, but the .5 made it a hair shy and is what we needed). The internet was no help so I went to Menard’s and then Depot looking for ideas. The original vents were 12 x 6 but I could only find ‘risers’ or sheet metal cut into a rectangle shape in a 12 x 4 size. I thought the smaller vent would actually look better since it would be centered on the soffit more so I bought some new vents and the riser material.

My brother helped out with this part of the project. We cut and shaped the riser material and then used foil tape and sheet metal screws to put it all together. It looks pretty good if you ask me.

I got help with soffit return from my father-in-law. I framed and drywalled the return knowing that I didn’t like it, but pushed on knowing I would have to come back to it later. Well, the time came on Friday night because I had to get it resolved before all the drywall finishing got into full gear.

My first idea was to angle the return and then use some trim on it or something. I didn’t like it, but it seemed like it would work. My father-in-laws idea was since I was already losing the 2″ on the stairs, I should just bring the soffit all the way into the stairs. As you can see, this looks better and feels ‘finished’. The carpet and molding will go right up against it. Awesome!