Allie, Unraveled: and TAPE! and MUD! and TAPE!

For those of you who have ever hung sheetrock, you know that, while hanging it can be a pain in the ass, taping it and slathering the walls with mud is an even less desirable task.

First, you tape and mud the seams. (By "mud" by the way, I mean joint compound, and enough of it to build a very small fort.

Joe tackled one wall, not looking very excited.

My dad started on the ceiling.

I think the smell of the compound went to Joe's head... ;)

My mom tackled everything she could reach. I'm not quite sure why she was upside down...

I actually spent that day hanging strips of sheetrock to cover the bottom most six inches of all the walls, since sheetrock comes in 4'x8' sheets, and our ceilings are 8 1/2' high. I also spent much time applying tape and mud, though, being the photographer, there is no evidence of this.

Every seam and every screw hole had to be taped. Or covered in joint compound. Or both.

That's EVERY seam, and EVERY screw hole. There were a lot.

What you see here in one post, actually took abut two weeks in real time. That's because when the mud is dry, you have to go around and sand all of those previously mentioned seams and screw holes to a very smooth finish. Not so bad. Except then you have to apply a wider, smoother, second coat of mud, and again, wait for it to dry. Then, yup...you guessed it, sand it to a very smooth finish. Finally, (and do you see a pattern here?) you have to go around and apply a third, watered-down coat very nicely and super smoothly and wait some more for it to dry. Then, one last round of sanding to what kind of finish? Class? Super smooth! Yes!

This, by the way, makes a giant mess. The result mimics what you would expect to see if you decided to dump a container of baby powder in front of a very high powered fan.

We were covered in sheet rock dust just about every night for a week and a half. Joe did most of the ceiling, working mostly right over his head, and this was the result.