After waking early, we did our morning language lessons, and texted birthday wishes to Sarah. She said that she would video chat with us after the boys got home from school.
We had Great Grains cereal for breakfast and started back to work on the ceiling in the room over the garage. The paint was dry on the planks that Mary and Cindy had stained yesterday afternoon, so we carried the 8-foot boards up to the second floor. The boards went up fairly quickly, so we moved to the last section that were 9’ 3” wide so we had to use the 10’ boards. We slowed down to cut around an electrical box for a ceiling light. We cut an access hole to for the ventilation fan in the attic. We had to rip a thin board for the last row on the ceiling, but it went into place fairly easily.
We stopped for a lunch of turkey sandwiches with tortilla chips and queso dip, then went back to work.
We finished the ceiling by around 3 pm and were pleased with how it looked. Since we had some stained planks left, we ripped pieces to enclose the windows at each end. The boards required some fine tuning to fit around the windows, but we got them nailed into place. Then we cut a plywood cover for the ceiling access then covered it with stained planks to match with the ceiling. The room still needed to have the Sheetrock finished and trim to be put up around the doors and windows as well as between the drywall and the stained pine planks. We started cleaning up the space since it was covered with sawdust and tools were placed around the room where we were using them.
Mark could tape and finish the drywall when they return from Oregon in two weeks. They were going to Oregon to finalize the purchase of a new house where Robert and Sheena will rent from them. They also planned to celebrate the boys’ birthdays and visit some of their Oregon friends. Mark does a good job with drywall and should get the room looking good soon once they return from the trip.
Sarah and the boys video called for a video chat, and it was great seeing them. We look forward to having them down for a sleepover soon.
We decided on leftover red beans and rice with a garden salad for dinner. We did our evening language lessons then watched two episodes of Vienna Blood on PBS.
After waking around 5 am, we did our morning language lessons and had a cup of tea. Mark made sheet pancakes with pecans and blueberries for breakfast. I had soaked a pound of red beans in water with baking soda the night before. I rinsed the beans well and added them to five cups of beef broth. I brought the beans to a boil then set them to simmer until dinner.
Mary and Cindy took the dogs on a walk through the neighborhood before going to Seven Rivers Presbyterian Church at Lecanto, Florida. Mark and I went to the room over the garage the continue installing pine planks on the 27’ long front side of the garage. Since we had the starter strip of planks already in place where the pine meets the drywall sheets the process of nailing the 8- and 10-foot planks on the wall went quickly. We noticed that we had incorrectly mitered one of the 8 foot boards after we had nailed it down with 16 gauge finish nails in the nail gun. That is when we were convinced that the holding power of the nails was more than adequate. That board was difficult to remove. We worked quickly and efficiently getting the wall completed by lunch.
We came in for a lunch of turkey sandwiches and tortilla chips with queso dip, then back out to the garage to work on the ceiling. I added andouille to the beans for Cajun style beans and rice for dinner. As expected, the first board was the most difficult but important. We wanted to use all 10 foot boards to eliminate joints in the ceiling. We needed to cut the boards to the exact length with a miter on both ends to meet with the planks on the angled walls. We installed the boards perpendicular to the direction of the boards of the walls.
Once the first board was up, the other 10-foot boards went up fairly quickly in that section of the ceiling. Because the selection of 10-foot planks was much more limited than the 8 footers, some of the boards had a slight bend. One of us had to screw a short section of 2 X 4 into a joist and pry the planks into place while the other one nailed it to the joint. For all of the planks, we used a short section of waste board to coax the tongue and groove boards together without damaging the edges.
By the time we had installed planks on the 13-foot section of ceiling we were tired and knew that we would need more planks to finish the ceiling. We measured the length of the ceiling requiring 8-foot planks in inches then divided by five which is the width of the planks, to get the needed number of planks for the ceiling. We did likewise for the ceiling section furthest from the house that was 9 1/4 feet wide and would need 10-foot planks.
We took Mark’s pickup to Home Depot and picked out the best planks we could find. Like most of the employees at the Crystal River Home Depot, our cashier was very old. She had difficulty scanning the lumber and had to hand enter the UPC for the boards. We fortunately had only 8’ and 10’ tongue and groove pine planks. The bill showed up as nearly $2000! It turns out that she had entered a quantity of 200 boards at the 8-foot length rather than the 20 boards that we were purchasing. She was unable to find the price for the dozen 10’ boards so she rang them up as the less expensive 8-foot planks. We got things straightened out and brought the boards into the garage where Mary and Cindy stained them while Mark and I moved the boards that were already stained upstairs to be used on the ceiling.
We went in for dinner of red beans with andouille and white rice which we all enjoyed our meals. After doing our evening language lessons we watched Astrid and Vienna Blood on PBS then went up to bed. We watched the last episode of Astrid until new episodes are released next year.
The air was brisk but not cold when the four of us moved the stored items across the garage after a breakfast of breakfast and cold cereal. Mary and Cindy walked the dogs while Mark and I went to Home Depot. We got two sheets of drywall to finish that part of the project. The pine tongue and groove planks were about $2 per square foot but we had to sort through hundreds of boards to get 250 square feet that was usable lumber. We estimated that we would ultimately need 500 square feet to cover the upper walls and the ceiling, but this was as much was we could get in this load. Mark picked up a gallon of clear water-based polyurethane to coat the boards before we hang them. We stopped by Harbor Freight to get more saw horses for Mary and Cindy to coat the boards. It was lunchtime by the time we purchased and loaded the boards so we carried the Sheetrock upstairs and started unloading the boards. We tried to get a variety of lengths from 8, 10 an 12 foot boards although most of the boards were 10 feet long. We stacked them in the garage by length and took boards needing sanding outside.
Mary made wraps of black beans, Mexican rice, and cheese for lunch then we went out to the garage to get started. Mary and Cindy worked to brush and roll sealer on the boards and place them on the garage floor to dry. Mark and I finished hanging the Sheetrock and making a crawl space opening in a side wall to access items for long term storage.
Since the sealer dried quickly on the boards, we decided to start hanging some on the 13 foot wall at the back of the garage. We put a long starter board up first with the tongue up, making certain it was level. We put 2 inch finish nails in with the Harbor Freight pneumatic nailer. We continued upward mixing 8 and 10 foot boards with mitered joints where the boards meet in a row. We completed the row by 5 pm and decided to clean up and quit for the day.
The job is looking good, and we were happy that we decided to use the pine planks. We considered options for the ceiling from continuing the wood onto the ceiling to drywall to tin. We would have some time to weigh options before we would be ready to work on the ceiling.
We went in and Cindy made a stir fry of beef, broccoli and Yakisoba noodles. I had never heard of Yakisoba but the noodles seemed a lot like Chinese Lo Mein noodles. We did our evening language lessons before watching an episode of Astrid and Vienna Blood on streaming PBS. The weather news from Cincinnati, Georgetown and Huntington continued to sound snowy and cold. We were happy to be in Florida during the foul weather. We turned in at 10 pm.
We awoke early, had morning beverages and did our morning language lessons. Breakfast was waffles then we took the dogs on their morning walk. The temperature was in the 40s so a jacket felt good for the walk.
When we returned from the walk, we continued hanging Sheetrock in the room above the garage. We finished covering the wall along the stairwell then cut sheets to fit the bottom section of the side walls. Each section was about 5 1/2 feet long and only had two cutouts for electrical receptacles. Mark and I worked well together to cut and hang the sheets.
We broke for lunch and had leftover black beans with tortilla chips then continued cutting and hanging sheets of gypsum until had the longer wall covered up to the 5 1/2 angle. Then we put two sheets up on the end of the room nearest the house. We had only two sheets left and estimated that we would need an additional two sheets plus the scraps from the cuts on the short walls to complete the job. We would have to move all of the items stored in the room to the area where we had already hung drywall. We would also need to go to Home Depot in the morning to buy the drywall and some tongue and groove pine panels to cover the angled side walls and perhaps the ceiling.
The dogs had a short walk in the neighborhood around Eldred, Bassett and Cedar gate before our dinner of a large garden salad with grilled chicken breast. After showering and doing evening language lessons we watched another episode of Astrid and one of Vienna Blood on PBS.
Mary and I had our morning beverages and did our language lessons then went downstairs. We had some of the leftover biscuits from Sunday along with cold cereal for breakfast. While Mary and Cindy took the dogs on their morning walk, Mark and I went to Home Depot to get supplies to work in the garage. The structure of the garage is concrete block so there was no damage to the exterior walls from flooding. However, the interior partition had damage from the saltwater that filled the garage with several feet of water over the night of September 26 during Hurricane Helene.
We bought a 4X 8 sheet of 1/2 inch Durock cement board to repair the downstairs partition and 11 sheets of Sheetrock to start the process of finishing the upstairs of the garage. We got a small pail of premixed thinset mortar to use like drywall mud for the cement board and the special 1 5/8” screws for the cement board.
When we got back to the house, we placed the new sheet of Durock against the damaged wall and used it as a template to remove the existing material. Most of the cutting was done with a masonry disc in Mark’s Milwaukee cordless angle grinder. We scraped around the rest of the wall to remove flaking paint and prepare the wall for repair. We attached the cement board with the screws then placed adhesive mesh tape along the joints. The mortar filled and smoothed the joints in preparation for finishing. Mark will prime the wall, spray it with orange peel texture and finally paint it to match the other walls in the garage.
We went into the house for a lunch of a bowl of soup and ham sandwiches then returned to the garage to carry the 4X8 sheets of drywall up the stairs of the garage. We started on the ends of the room since full sheets were required to cover the walls. We tried using the Roto-Zip to cut the drywall around outlets and the windows, but the 25-year-old tool no longer had the power to speed through the cuts. We found that a drywall blade in Mark’s cordless Milwaukee oscillating saw did a much better job. By dinnertime we had one end of the room covered and had started on the wall along the stairwell.
Although the temperature got down to the low 40s this morning, it warmed up to the upper 70s by afternoon. While watching local news from Lexington and Huntington online we are seeing single digit temperatures at night as well as additional snow added to the initial 8-12 inches from the weekend. Continued cold temperatures and snow in the forecast promise no relief in sight. We feel for family in Georgetown, Cincinnati and Huntington but are happy that we are in Florida during this weather.
We cleaned up and drove to The Villages where we had dinner with Grant and Jodie. Jodie had a taco bar and baked quesadillas. We had a variety of desserts and chips to snack on as well. After dinner, most of the group played card games while I read. Grant and Jodie were leaving for a Caribbean cruise, and we enjoyed hearing about their travel plans.
After we got in from Jodie’s we covered a few plants outside in anticipation of possible temperatures here in Florida approaching the mid 30s.
