Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Maybe I should start a v4.0 build thread somewhere

All that hard work and measuring will pay off soon enough.

So tonight I made quite the mess. I needed to cut all of the blocking pieces that go between the joists. Normally, that it pretty easy, but since I have I-beams for joists, I had to basically cut out a "lap joint" on both ends of each blocking piece of 2x4. Keep in mind that there are 52 total pieces, and while most of them were either 19" or 18.75", there were 5 other sizes that needed to be cut.

So I got to it, cutting them all out. That was fun (not) considering that my workbench was torn down prior to the first inspection. So I am cutting on the floor.

I took an 8 foot length of R19 insulation, folded it over, and tried to make some level of padding for my knees.

So after a while I had this:
A nice collection of 52 pieces of blocking:


Next was the lap joints. How the heck was I going to do that? I had 104 to do, plus whatever testing pieces. Well, after some thought on using a jigsaw, or a circular saw, or even a table saw... I broke out my router and made a little jig... It doesn't need to last forever, so I just whipped it together in a few minutes.



End result is 104 (plus my 1 test) nice and perfect lap joints.



Remember that these are designed to rest on top of the bottom of the I-beam so that it is effectively recessed up into the ceiling joists, yet is down far enough that when I put up the clips and hat channel, the drywall will end up 1/2" below the actual I-beam joists for the decoupling.

Tomorrow night I will get them up as well as the clips and channel... Drywall gets delivered on Thursday afternoon, so I need to get things cleaned up in the basement to make sure that nothing is in the way of where they are going to "stock" the drywall.

I did all my cuts like that on my table saw, too lazy to pull out the router and such.

I was trying to come up with the easiest way to do it and get a good surface when done. Plus I don't trust my table saw right now. I think that it is out to get me... Seriously...

I was ripping a number of 2x4 boards in half to use for building the skeleton of my soffits, and after about twelve 8-foot boards the saw blade (or actually the whole motor/blade assembly) started jumping around when first starting and cutting the boards. Everything is tight, so I am guessing a dull blade, but I didn't have a replacement, and I didn't want to kill an hour to go buy one...

The router worked well. Took about 1 minute to do each board, plus some times to get up and get blood flowing back to my legs/feet.

I am sure your method was quicker over all. And yes that does sound like a VERY dull blade.

Yeah, I muscled through them, but probably should just pick up a new blade some time soon. It is a cheap table saw. Funny how its blade is pretty much unusable (because it was cheap), yet the blade on my DeWalt miter-saw, which is about 2 years older that the table saw, and gets used a LOT more, still cuts just fine.

You might also consider a good ripping blade for those times when you have a bigger job like that.

I normally run a combo blade for general work but keep a ripping blade and a good 80 tooth blade (finer cuts) handy for when they are needed.

I used to think just a combo is fine for everything but the right blade can really make things easier when you need it.

Well, it took 4 guys about 35 minutes after they got the big truck set up and the first load on the crane. We had a tree in the back yard that prevented them from getting right outside the door, so that time was with them going down a slope and then unloading on to some carts right inside the door. They put 35 sheets of 5/8" in the home theater room, 10 sheets of 5/8" and 5 sheets of 1/2" in the game room/wet bar area. And the remaining 5/8" and 1/2" went into the family room. 108 sheets of 4'x12' drywall in total. That would have taken 162 sheets of 4x8 had I gotten it myself, and I would have been dead tired after just a few sheets since I would have to unload at the street (no crane).

I am also going to "rent" a nice drywall lift from the lead guy that was here for $50 for as long as I need vs. $95 for 1 week from a rental place (that was the best time/price deal).

Now to get Christmas stuff done so I can try to start hanging drywall by this time next week.

Awesome deal on the lift!!

Two videos for you...

The first one is them using the crane on the truck to reach further into the yard to make their work less difficult (notice that I didn't say "easy"). If the tree wasn't in the way, they could have gotten almost right to the back door.

Sorry about the shaky cam. I am used to using our camcorder and not my cell phone for video.

Unloading drywall off of the truck.

The second video was them unloading off of the end of the crane and into the house. They put about 12 sheets on to the cart shown in the picture and then moved the cart around to get the drywall where they wanted to unload it, even if that was 10 feet away.

Hauling the drywall into the house.

The guys were pretty tired. You could tell a huge difference in their energy (dropping) when they switched from 1/2" to 5/8" drywall.