If necessity is the mother of invention, then poverty and misplaced confidence are the parents of DIY.
When we bought our home eight years ago, it was plenty large enough for Tim, me and a preschooler. Now we are a family of four and space is feeling tight. We have reconfigured the kids bedroom in a half-a-dozen ways, but have run out of options to keep a kindergartener and a middle schooler out of each other’s way.
It occurred to us that the primary bedroom was partially underutilized as an office and a sleeping area. Half of the space is occupied by an ancient desktop computer on desk that has become a graveyard for junk mail. Why not swap rooms, build a small dividing wall and get better use of the space?
As for cost, things started out cheaply enough with two-by-fours only costing eight dollars each. Seven of those could frame out the room into two separate spaces. With a coupon, we ended up buying instead of renting a circular saw. At that point, the project still cost less than a hundred bucks.
By now we have been to every aisle in Home Depot, a store we spend as much time in as we do on our actual projects. Installing a bathroom sink a couple of years ago was a six-trip endeavor. If we knew the total price, or the amount of work needed to complete these kinds of jobs ahead of time, we probably would be totally overwhelmed, so we just do a little at a time. We watched several Youtube videos about framing an interior wall and did that. That was three weeks ago.
Two weeks ago, we watched several short videos on installing drywall. Four sheets fit into our SUV with the back seats folded down, so that happened. We also found some wall insulation made out of recycled denim. It’s much softer and safer than working with fiberglass. If you have time, check out the video of the people who discovered used stuffies filling their interior walls. As parents, we admit that the thought of doing something like that has crossed our minds.
This weekend was all about joint compound and corner bead. It turns out that no two YouTubers do tape and mudding the same, so who’s to say that there’s a wrong way to do that? If none of the words in this paragraph make sense, don’t worry, we just learned them all recently too. We are all learning as we go and that’s part of the fun.
