Something this way comes...

There are a few things happening around Isthmus House these days... we're finishing up the first floor! 

Now, that sounds like it'll take a few days, right? "Finishing" a lot longer than that though!

Today, let's talk about how to prepare your home for drywall installation.

There are a couple of things that need to be considered when you're looking at installing drywall:

1. How to protect your hardwood floors

2. How to keep dust out of the rest of your home

First, get all of your things out of the way. This might seem obvious, but you need it in a place where it won't be damaged (or get dusty) and won't get in the way. We missed two jackets in the hallway behind a door and they took ages to clean up. For us, that meant our front sunroom:

We stacked nearly everything in there... 

Then one of The Roommates that was moving shortly purchased a love seat intended to go in the basement. It didn't fit, so our kitchen got a little full too:

Once everything was tucked away, uh, securely (including our dishes?), it was time to take care of floors and dust migration prevention. 

First up was turning off the HVAC. There's no point in trying to block doorways if you're just going to dirty up your vents and send drywall dust through the house. It's unpleasant for a few days but I promise, it's a necessary step!

Next was putting plastic over all of the doors. I'm not going to tell you it blocks 100% of every dust mite but it makes things way better. I purchased 3mm plastic that comes in a large roll. I'm glad I chose it instead of the cheaper, thinner, easily torn plastic to protect our things. 

To get it up, I recommend tacking up the top corners with masking tape before taping every nook and cranny down with masking tape. Make sure you're using tape that will stay but won't do damage to any walls you're not changing. I used a pro painter's tape.

It's worth putting up thick plastic on not only doorways that will be closed for the duration of your drywall project but also over doorways that will still be used for general traffic flow. 

To deal with said doorways, I purchased zipper doors. A small kit that allows you to zip and unzip a doorway as needed, I can't recommend these highly enough to keep some semblance of real life but I'll warn you now - read the instructions and follow them exactly!

As you can see, I briefly switched to duct tape as well

The other aspect of preparing your home for drywall is protecting your floors. To do this, use rosin paper.

Starting in the furthest corner of the furthest room you plan to paper (i.e. set up so that you don't have to walk over your newly lain paper) set your first row of paper running sideways about an inch and a half off the wall and tape that edge down, running a continuous strip of tape from corner to corner. 

For the next row, overlap your first row by a couple of inches before taping your new row down to the first. The room's edges can either be taped as you go or all at the end as you finish each room. We went for taping as we went so that we didn't accidentally mess ourselves up later.

The last thing you'll need to do is remove delicate light fixtures, ceiling fans, etc. Especially if your ceilings are being drywalled, be nice to your installers and to your light fixtures and take them down to take care of them.

Now that you have all the know-how to protect your home, what do you think of our little project? Looks like a bit of a mess this week! Come back next week to see it looking a bit better!