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I bet you’re thinking, “Jerry received his KX3 and the basement project has been placed on the back, back burner”.  Yes, it’s been a while since I provided a progress update on the basement project.  Yes, I did receive my KX3 as I’ve blogged about several times.  But NO, the basement project was not placed on the back, back burner…it has been progressing along nicely.  Today I have a major update to provide.

We’ve turned some major corners in the past few months with this project.  While I know many of you could certainly have done everything I’ve completed over the past 3-4 months in perhaps just a few weekends, I’ve wanted to make sure I had time for other things.  Plus I’ve never considered this to be a race.  Very early on I established a goal for completion of Labor Day weekend to be fully moved into the new space.  I’m very happy to report that we are still on-time and on budget.

On April 16th, I reported “The Shack has a Ceiling”.  My wife and I started the process of mudding the joints and all the screw holes (along with a few “oops” areas).  We taped and applied the first coat of joint compound (drywall mud), then sanded.  We repeated that process, then sanded.  Finally, last weekend I applied the third and final finish and wider coat of joint compound and we lightly sanded.  We were ready for the next phase…texture!

Of all the tasks I’ve performed for this project (framing, electrical, plumbing, A/C Vent, drywall) applying texture is the only thing I’ve never done before.  So I spent some spare time over the past week or two watching YouTube videos and reading as much as I could on the art of applying texture.  Because I will have some other future drywall projects to complete, we opted to purchase a texture sprayer/hopper gun versus rent. 

Home Depot sells the Wal-Board Texture Pro 200 hopper sprayer for $70 bucks.   While this machine might not be everything a pro would need, I figured it would work fine for my use.   Since I had used the pre-mixed joint compound for the taping and mudding phase, I decided to stick with that versus other formulas. 

Since I had never applied texture I really had no clue just how much material (joint compound) we would use.  I started out with two 5 pound buckets.  In an empty 5 gallon bucket I thinned the pre-mixed joint compound into a consistency of thick paint.  We were looking for a medium orange peel texture.  After mixing for a few minutes with my drill and mixing attachment, I filled the hopper and applied texture to the side of a cardboard box.  A little tweaking of air pressure and mixture consistency and I was ready to go. 

After texturing two of the 16’ walls, I realized I probably needed another 5 gallon bucket of pre-mix.  I kept mixing and spraying, mixing and spraying.  My wife was starting to feel sorry for me and I think she also secretively wanted to try her hand at the texture gun.  She began spraying while I continued to mix.

This teamwork actually worked out really well.  I didn’t fill the hopper as full as I would have normally done for myself and when I wasn’t mixing compound, it allowed me to move and position the drop cloth and plastic around the room as she continued to spray.  We managed to get all the walls textured in just about 3 hours. 

To celebrate, we went to Home Depot yesterday and took advantage of their Behr paint Memorial Day Savings event.    We saved $5 per gallon and $25 per 5-gallon.  A nice savings and just when we needed it. 

We will probably take this coming weekend off and resume work on the weekend of June 9-10.   The next phase is the painting phase and I suppose if we get started on 9 June, we could easily be finished in a few weekends and have the painting phase finished by July.   This leads us to the flooring phase. 

At the time of this blog posting, we are not 100% clear on just what we will do with the floor.  Tile of some type has always been the top choice.  Carpet in a basement just doesn’t work and I want the ability to zoom across the room in my chair if need be.  Decisions…Decisions…but they will be made and will be made in the very near future.

My apologies as the picture above just simply does not do the texture job any justice at all.  I took this in a hurry this morning and didn’t take time to turn on all the portable lights.  The ceiling recessed lighting is still covered.    The two bumps are tape covering electrical outlet boxes.  These will be just above the desk surface in the ham shack. 

While I hate the see the long holiday weekend come to an end, there is a part of me that is looking forward to going back to work so that I can get some rest and recharge my batteries for the next phase…PAINT!!!

Until next time…

73 de KDØBIK

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