Bad news: I don't seem to know how to operate my camera. See, the framing's been done for a week and I took a lot of good detail shots to show all that went into it. Or at least I thought; my memory card was still in the USB converter when I snapped lots of shots of nothing.
Even though I don't have pretty images to support my claim (I'll take real ones tonight!) there are some interesting annecdotes to share relative to all the wood now in the basement.
1) I got a call out of the blue from my old project manager. Her voicemail was cryptic but said she was having some thoughts about the plan and wanted to review. HA! Total blast from my intern past. This is the woman who drilled into me the importance of alignment, centering things, etc. It later played into the wedding dress project. We haven't connected yet (because of working on said basement) but I'm hoping that whatever she was about to suggest I intuitively did on my own, thanks to her good training. The floor plan isn't exactly as pictured - minor changes - but here's hoping...
2) The amount of framing that now needs to be covered has intimidated us, I admit. Late Sunday night we were doing a big clean-up to make room for laying out plumbing lines and both of us sheepishly raised the white flag on impending drywall. Should we try and get someone to do it for us? And would it be worth it or would we be throwing money out the door?
3) My mom has gotten great pleasure out of the fact that I finally seem to be putting my architecture degree to work. Well, the business degree got some utilization too, in the form of a nerdy - but convincing! - cost/benefit analysis. Behold our solidly estimated cost to drywall the basement ourselves:
Not bad, right? Now here's the kicker. Another Craigslist posting gave us around 60+ responses of guys willing to do the work. Other responses involved asking if I could revise a woman's tattoo, our plumber Pete obviously spamming whatever odd job gets listed, some dudes offering furnaces at 40% off, you get the picture. But we had a few of the more legit guys come by and I am thrilled to annouce we're lined up to have the walls and ceilings covered, taped, sanded, and cleaned-up over the weekend for the bargain-basement (haha) price of $350! SWEET SWEET SHEETROCKING FREEDOM!
The one bad side to this is we have GOT to finish everything that goes in the walls and ceiling by Friday. To my studio friends, charrette has followed me home.
P.S. I love the shout-out to my alma mater in the wikipedia entry from above! So appropriate.
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