Thoughts on Hanging Drywall and Exciting Cottage Renovation Progress

We have many thoughts on hanging drywall and our exciting cottage renovation progress all while still living in this little fixer upper.

DRYWALL HUNG AND TEMPORARY LIGHT FIXTURES

Alright y’all at this point in our journey on our fixer upper renovations, we were finally able to get all of the drywall up in the house. And we even put in temporary light fixtures. They are not pretty by no means and they are not something that we want permanently. We just got some temporary ones that were on sale. Then we could really take our time to figure out how we’re going to be using our spaces.

It would be so great to get some antique chandeliers especially in the kitchen and the bathroom above the clawfoot tub. 

We were still living in this fixer upper cottage during this whole process! It was certainly a long ride! We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. 

CLEANING UP AFTER HANGING DRYWALL

Nate vacuumed and mopped our temporary plywood floors. All of the drywall dust had accumulated on it along with all the other construction debris we had going on. We did not intend to keep the plywood flooring for very long. But here we are, almost three years later and they are still on our floors to this day!

We put temporary vinyl flooring in our bedroom and bathroom in the very beginning. It gave these two very important rooms more of a homey feel. And since the bathroom probably gets more wet than any other room, it definitely needed a water barrier~ those temporary vinyl floors!

We also thought that we would use that same temporary vinyl flooring in the bedroom throughout the entire house. But we still haven’t figured out what we really want for our flooring permanently. 

At the hardware store, we looked at several samples of the vinyl flooring to put on top of our plywood.

We salvaged some of the old original 1930’s hardwood floors that we want to reuse. However, a lot of it was so damaged that we may not be able to use that much. We’ll see as we haven’t gotten to that point yet. But, the more that we thought about the rest of the house, it didn’t make sense to buy the vinyl.

We knew that we would be moving things around as it’s still a construction zone. So for us to go out and spend money on vinyl flooring, which is cheaper than real hardwood floors, it’s still a pretty penny to buy! But, then it will get all messed up in this fixer upper construction zone and be thrown out anyway. It would be more material waste so we decided to not go that route and we continue to have plywood floors to this day. We will get to the flooring one day soon hopefully and document that project here on the blog as well. 

THOUGHTS ON HANGING DRYWALL BACKWARDS

It’s crazy to think we have drywall and lights now including light switches and outlets! Making some huge progress around these parts! 

We have many thoughts on hanging drywall and the exciting cottage renovation progress we have made so far.

Now I know that it may look like we are doing things a little backwards by putting the light fixtures on the drywall before they were completed and mudded because we did need light fixtures to live in our space while we continue to renovate. 

However, the good thing about all of this is that a lot of the areas of the drywall where we did put the light fixtures, we didn’t know it at the time, but we actually ended up putting old salvaged beadboard and shiplap on the drywall so we did not have to go through that dusty mudding process. That worked out for a lot of areas. We’ll share more of those projects in an upcoming blog. 

WHY WE DIDN’T HIRE SOMEONE TO DO THE DRYWALL

Another thing we had considered was to hire some contractors to come in and do the drywall for us so that we did not have to take on that large of a task. But at that time, we couldn’t find anyone to do it, first of all. And we wanted to save money. So it worked out to where we had to just do it on our own. 

Looking back~ another good thing about us doing the drywall on our own. If we wanted to change things around, which we have done a lot of and you will read about soon, then you didn’t just pay someone to come and do your drywall for you when you are just breaking it up and redoing it anyways. It actually turned out to be a really good thing for us. And it doesn’t hurt to learn another skill while you are renovating your home. 

ORGANIZING CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS AND OLD SALVAGED WOOD

We had those construction dumpster bin like things. Nate built an area on the side of our little cottage garage where we could throw any construction materials into. It had filled up throughout this time that we had been renovating the inside and the outside.

Nate went through everything and organized it, especially the original wood that we were able to salvage. He made piles of what we would keep, what was the original 1930’s wood, and what we would toss and get rid of. 

That was a huge task to do, but it was so great that he had the time to do it. Now we’ve got a ton of old salvaged wood that we can use for current projects like our many built-ins that Nate has been or is working on in our kitchen, living room, and bedroom. 

One thing to note is that organizing is not an easy thing to do especially in a construction zone like this. Nate is not very organized and I’m a lot more organized than he is, but when he has a bunch of crap everywhere and he needs to go through it, he is so fast at getting it done. For me, I get like paralyzed and will stare at a pile forever and nothing will get done. 

Once Nate figured out what we were going to toss and get rid of, we put that at the curb in front of our house. We have bulk pick up that comes to our neighborhood and we left it around that time for them to pick it up. There was a lot of demolition materials from the studs and drywall.

We hoped that you enjoyed reading about our many thoughts on hanging drywall along with our exciting cottage renovation progress as we continue on with much more!

Proverbs 24:3

Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established.

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.

🏚 FIRST TIME HANGING DRYWALL WITH MY HUSBAND IN OUR SMALL COTTAGE 💪🏼🙆🏻‍♀️

🏚 HANGING DRYWALL ON THE OFFICE WALLS ALONE 💪🏼