First Time Hanging Drywall With My Husband in Our Small Cottage

This was my first time hanging drywall with my husband in our small cottage that we were working to renovate and rebuild mostly on our own.

We rented a box truck from Home Depot to transport some really large pieces of drywall that our little car trailer was not able to carry. The car trailer helped us to transport 8 foot and maybe 10 foot drywall sheets, but it was a no go for the larger 12 foot ones. That’s why we had to rent a truck and make a delivery for ourselves. 

HANGING DRYWALL WITH MY HUSBAND – DRYWALL DELIVERY

The whole point of building a car trailer was to save money by transporting the drywall by ourselves. Since we had really large walls to cover that connected the living room with the kitchen, we thought the larger drywall sheets would be better at hiding the seams. So, this was a special exception we allowed for ourselves and had the budget to do so. But, it would definitely not become a habit – that’s for sure. 

Maybe we are a bit extreme with our DIY efforts as the guy at Home Depot was probably confused by how we would rent a truck to do this on our own. He said that they normally would deliver drywall, but we also knew that would come at a price that we didn’t want to pay. We are cheap and proud to do as much as we can to save money. When it makes sense, of course! 

HANGING DRYWALL WITH MY HUSBAND – DRYWALL UNLOADING

Oh yea, here I was with my bad self as I helped Nate carry the long pieces of drywall in the house. It felt nice to finally help with some of the renovations! Nate asked if I got it ok and I assured him that I did. Then he quickly said that this type of job was just too easy for me! Yea, it was easy because he was actually doing all the work and holding up the most weight. I was just grabbing one end (the lightest part) and carrying it a few feet in a straight line through the house. 

Nate had me carry the front part of the drywall going into the house while he carried the back part. This made it easier for me to carry and more difficult for him. We went back and forth several times unloading the sheets. We thought that we could maybe carry more than one sheet at a time to make it go faster, like maybe two sheets at once. And that was a definite no go. It would be way to heavy, especially for me. Nate made the decision that we wouldn’t even try it as it didn’t seem like a good plan and could back fire on us. 

Nate even stumbled at one point and said that he felt like I was stronger than him! Nice joke and probably just his way of getting me to help more often!

I realized we were both wearing slippers while we were carrying these heavy loads of drywall. Friendly tip if you are working on a similar project~ wear closed toe shoes! If I can recall, I think I even stubbed my toe with those slippers one time when I ran into a sharp corner of drywall. I learned a new skill throughout this whole process~ how to navigate a construction site in my own home!

FIRST TIME HELPING MY HUSBAND WITH DRYWALL

During this time, Nate was working full time on our house, while I was adapting to working from home during the pandemic. And yes, not only did we live in this fixer upper cottage while we were renovating, but I was also working from home in it! And to top it off, I had just started a brand new position with my company. It was quite a stressful time to say the least. That is why I was not able to help out with a lot of the renovations. Ok, I’ll admit to defending myself a little! 

HANGING DRYWALL WITH MY HUSBAND IN THE KITCHEN AND LIVING ROOM

Here we were finally putting drywall up on the very large wall that connects the living room and kitchen. Those were huge pieces of drywall! It felt so great to finally be rebuilding our home after all of the demo projects that we had been working on. 

It felt like we were really building this home from scratch now. Yea, just can just call me muscles. Mm hmm~ I got a few of them! I can’t believe I helped to hang those heavy sheets of drywall! It felt like such a great accomplishment. Nate even said I was good at it!

After we would lift up the drywall together to hang it, Nate would then screw the large pieces into the studs. 

It really seemed like we were getting a lot done in a short amount of time. 

Oh, and Nate was getting so much better at using the router to cut holes in the drywall for our pipes, outlets, light fixers, and anything that needed to be exposed. He started to figure it out a little more. That was a good thing! It was all coming together real nicely. 

TEMPORARY LIGHT FIXTURES AFTER HANGING DRYWALL

Now we were finally installing temporary light fixtures in our kitchen and throughout the house. 

We didn’t really have any time to figure out what kind of light fixtures we wanted to put throughout the house so we knew that we’d just start with temporary ones. We just went to the store and found whatever we could that was on sale and nothing really matched. It was our way of just getting light fixtures up for us to kind of assess the spaces and the areas to decide what we really wanted to go for later. 

We know that in the kitchen and the living room, we have been looking out for antique chandeliers at local antique markets. We haven’t found the right ones yet and they are quite the pricey investment. But, we are always keeping our eyes peeled for those. And it would also be really cool to put a cute little chandelier right above our clawfoot tub in the bathroom. 

Psalm 90:17

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, And establish the work of our hands for us; Yes, establish the work of our hands.

CHECK OUT OUR VIDEOS

Thanks for joining us on this journey! We hope that you will find inspiration watching us learn as we go while we’re attempting to renovate and rebuild this old small historic cottage mostly on our own. Stay tuned for more progress updates ahead!

You can also watch a video about this here.

To see more adventures of our tiny fixer upper journey, click on the links below.

🏚 HANGING DRYWALL ON THE OFFICE WALLS ALONE 💪🏼

🏚 HANGING DRYWALL ON HIGH VAULTED CEILING FRAME ALONE 💪🏼