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Some have asked “Who is this U.W. person?”  If you’ll recall from the very first GarageDominium post, U.W. is short for Understanding Wife.  She is very understanding.  But sometimes she is not so patient with, or enthusiastic about, this project.  However, after 37 years of marriage she is very understanding about my need to research and over analyze things.  She has also become a very keen inspector.  I’m at the build site much more often, so when she comes out, she notices things that others have become too familiar with.  This was particularly the case with wall studs she didn’t like.  She marked those boards with the word “Yuck” so everyone would notice.

Drywall was supposed to arrive around August 5 but didn’t show up until the 16^th.   There was no progress on site for a week due to this delay.   In the meantime, U.W. selected cabinet hardware.  After going back and forth between brushed nickel and black hardware, she settled on black hardware for the cabinets and doors.  She considered using a mixture of the two decided against that.  She is also working on final cabinet finishes with the interior decorator.

I’ve been arguing with the garage door vendor over installation methods.  As you may recall from GarageDominium Post 28, I want to mount the garage door tracks as high as possible.  The vendor didn’t think we had room to mount the doors above the dormer windows.  However, pointing out the manufacturer’s guidelines and taking more measurements he has started to come around.  He thinks we have room to do what I want, but he needs to confirm the measurements.

On August 16 we finally received our drywall material.  We were also blessed with a 3-man installation crew!  These guys are fast and good.  They stuck the youngest guy with donning stilts and hanging all the ceiling drywall.  Another man fed him the material, all cut to size.  The third man worked on vertical walls.  By the end of the week, they were almost complete, only lacking about a third of the garage.

So as not to disappoint my dear readers and U.W., I did a little research on the history of drywall.  Drywall is everywhere – in your house, in offices and stores – just about every building you may enter.  We may call it Sheetrock, gyp board, plasterboard, or wallboard but drywall is the common name.

Plaster and lath walls were once the more common construction.  Plaster is very labor and time intensive and requires several coats.  It could take weeks to create with plaster what can be completed in days with drywall.  Drywall is much easier to repair than plaster and it is also more fire resistant.

USG invented drywall in 1916, but it took more than 25 years to really catch on in home construction.  During World War II the country focused on manufacturing war materials.  The country needed quick and inexpensive building materials to offset the labor shortage.  Drywall was the answer.  By the end of the war drywall was the predominate building material.

Drywall is made primarily of gypsum (calcium sulfate hydrate) found in sedimentary rocks around the world.  You’ll find gypsum in toothpaste, cement, plaster medical casts, as a food additive and of course drywall.  To make drywall, manufacturers mix gypsum with additives such as starch and paper pulp to form a paste.  They spread the paste onto manila paper.  Then it goes into and oven for drying.  Follow this link to a Howstuffworks.com article that I used as a reference.  It gives a lot more interesting stuff about drywall.

Our drywall is USG Sheetrock Brand Ultralight 1/2” sheets for most walls and USG Sheetrock Brand Firecode X 5/8” panels on the ceilings.  It is not surprising that our drywall came from a Mexican factory.  All the writing and labels on the drywall are in Spanish.  Sheetrock is Tablaroca in Spanish. Tablaroqueros, none of whom speak English, installed it.  Regardless of their language and heritage, they did a good job.

U.W. and I went by the site on August 21 to check out the drywall progress.  She had not seen it since they started this process.  It is really different walking around and not seeing through stud walls.  As we drove up to the site, we were greeted with a very nice surprise.  The exterior stone is on site!  Now if only we could find masons . . .