There are a lot of reasons I feel this way. Sheetrock is bulky. It's heavy. It's hard to lift. It's hard to keep in place once you get it lifted. It cuts easily, but never clean enough to keep the paper on the back from shredding, lifting, or wadding up on itself. It's messy. It demands a precision with the screw gun that I've never quite been able to master - not enough pressure and you won't be able to cover the screw with mud - too much and the screw will punch through the paper altogether rendering it absolutely useless. The corners break and won't lay flat anymore. Web tape catches on your knife, and pulls away from the wall. Paper tape bubbles and folds. Both require a heavy first coat of mud to fully bury them into the wall. Most people don't use enough, and are pretty sloppy about applying it, so if I'm going to be left to finish the job - which, even when I'm just being hired to paint, I'm frequently expected, by the general contractor, to simply do as a matter of course for reasons that make absolutely no sense whatsoever to me at all - I prefer to do this part as well.
Once that first coat of mud is dry, you have to sand it, which sends a shower of very light, very fine gypsum dust flying into the air. This dust gets everywhere. All over the ceiling, all over the walls, all over the floor, all over anything sitting in the room, all over anything sitting in the next room. It gets in your hair, in your eyes, in your ears, up your nose, on your lips, in your mouth, on your teeth, down your throat, into your lungs, and all over your skin. It's thirsty and attaches itself with a vengeance to any moisture it finds. You cannot simply blow your nose and be done with it. You have to sniff up some water, rub it around a little, sniff up some more, blow that out, and do it again. Wearing a mask definitely helps, but you're still going to end up going through this ritual at the end of the day and wondering what all that stuff is doing to your lungs.
It's nearly impossible to get rid of no matter where it goes. It's so fine, it simply passes through the filter on most vacuum cleaners and just ends up being spewed out the back to settle somewhere else. You can get a special filter for your shop vac that will actually catch most of it, but those tend to fill up and start choking on the stuff within just a couple of minutes of heavy use. Sweeping it up just sends a good part of it right back up into the air. Getting it wet turns it right back into mud.
You have to go through this nightmare at least three times because every wall needs at least three coats of mud. Most need four. Some need five.
I have sworn time and time again that I will never even consider doing another sheetrock job, no matter how much I'm offered, or how badly I need the money. But I'm good at it. Really good. The money people offer me to do it is substantial, and there have been many times when it's the only work anyone has available for me to do at all. So I do it. I just really hate doing it.
Today I hate it even more than I usually do. It's hot - easily over 100 degrees in the trailer even with fan blowing. I can't do the work I want, and was planning to do because there's a big hole in the wall I'm working on. It's a hole I didn't leave, in a wall I'm pretty sure I'm eventually going to tear down and move. It encloses a bunch of wires that terrify me and a hot water heater I'm quickly coming to absolutely detest. I've had to tear apart a different wall to get it done. I'm covered in dust. The leftover mud I'm using is full of tiny bits of debris from some other job. My tape is bubbling. The mud is drying so fast I don't have time to work any of it to my usual smooth finish. I haven't eaten. I'm dehydrated. I have a headache. I'm cursing. I'm swearing. I think I'm never going to get done with this wretched job - until, of course, I actually do - and suddenly, miraculously, just like every other time I've found myself in this position, my irritation with life in general simply disappears.
I change into my bathing suit, then take myself and my tools outside. I get the hose. I get some shampoo. I get some soap. I get clean. My tools get clean. I drink some water. I eat some food. I take an ibuprofen. I start to feel human again.
I come back inside the trailer to look at my work. Definitely not the best job I've done. But at least I no longer have to look at the water heater with all its scary wires anymore. And, of course, I can now get that counter built.
Takes me about two hours. It's not a complicated job. All I really have to do is cut the counter top to length, screw legs on one end, set the other end on top of my little refrigerator, and attach it to a couple of studs so it won't go anywhere.
I'm repurposing a 21" wide slab door for the countertop. I got the door - along with three others - for free through Craigslist. I've used doors for this purpose before. The only requirement is that they have to be flat, and they have to be solid. You can tile them if you want. You can laminate them. Or you can just slap a couple of coats of good paint on them like I'm planning to do - top, sides, underneath, and especially the edges of any holes you cut for a sink - and resign yourself to having to touch them up every once in a while.
The legs come from Ikea. They're metal. They have a big metal plate on top that attaches to the counter with screws. They come in two sections, the bottom section fitting into the upper one via some kind of fancy Scandinavian screw mechanism that allows you to adjust them to whatever height you want. I pulled them out of a trashcan somewhere about seven years ago, fixed the screw mechanisms, and have been using them for a variety of purposes ever since.
My little refrigerator was a last minute, very unexpected, and very welcome gift from a friend. He'd been using it in his classroom at North Hollywood High, and had given it to another teacher when he'd retired in June. If he'd known I needed it at the time, he would have given it to me instead. But he hadn't, and we'd left it at that. The week of my move he called to tell me he'd contacted the teacher in question, explained the situation, and gotten her to agree to let me have it. I just had to go pick it up.
( BTW, Preston, if you're reading this, please know how deeply touched I was by everything you did to get me the refrigerator I needed so badly but couldn't afford to buy even second-hand. It meant so much to me. Still does. And I'm also, by the way, still sorry I threw away your iced tea.)
So, my second day in the little trailer was definitely not as thrilling, or action-packed as the first. It did involve sheetrocking, but that's all the sheetrocking I should have to do here - at least for a while anyway. And, despite that particular bit of unpleasantness, I did end up getting my first counter unit installed.
Tomorrow I'll start on the second, more complicated one.
For now, I'm going to pour myself a big iced coffee and go sit outside to watch the stars come out. There are so many, they take my breath away. That feeling of awe I experience is, I know, the gift of yet another friend given on a night just like this a very long time ago that touched me deeply, and is still abundantly pregnant with meaning for me all these years later.
I cannot think of a better way to end my day than in the company of all those stars and all those thoughts about all the people in my life who have given me so much.
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