Stage 3: The Dry-Wall Guys Do Their Thing

In July of 2008, the city I live in (Calgary) was in the midst of an economic boom. We're an oil town, so when oil prices are high money flows like water and construction projects are everywhere, putting people with trade skills in demand. I thought finding someone to do the drywall cutting, taping, patching, and sanding would prove to be easy - but it was anything but easy. I tried a few people that the electrician recommended, but none of them worked out due to the small nature of the job and how busy the contractors were. Some of you may be thinking "Um, Jason, it's just drywalling - can't you do that yourself?". I wasn't kidding about lacking do-it-yourself skills - I wanted to ensure this wall looked fantastic when it was completed, and I didn't trust my neophyte skills to do the job. At any rate, I ended up turning to Kijiji to find someone for this project. There weren't a lot of people to chose from, but I thought this was such a simple project, how could anyone screw it up? Because of that, I didn't ask for references from previous jobs. I really should have asked for references.

Figure 7: The drywall after the "professionals" were done with it.

I should have been alerted by the fact that the two-man crew showed up with almost no equipment - not even a drop cloth to catch some of the debris they'd be creating. Initially it seemed like things were going OK, and other than dust getting everywhere, there were no real problems. Before they did the final sanding we covered as much of our couches as we could in garbage bags because I realized, belatedly, that they weren't using one of those vaccum-sanders that trapped most of the drywall dust.

After they were finished I phoned my father-in-law, who happens to be a Journeyman painter, and hired him to paint the wall. Unfortunately he discovered that the drywall "pros" didn't mix their drywall mud properly and there were more than two-dozen spots that had air bubbles and couldn't be painted over properly. He had to re-mud and re-sand all the spots you see below before he could paint the wall. Thanks drywall guys, way to go. Professional fail #1.

Figure 8: Just a "few" areas that need re-patching and re-sanding.

Figure 9: After the patches were painted over we realized that the paint we thought was a match was a fair bit off. The whole wall was going to be painted with the new colour, but that meant it would be a different colour than the adjoining walls. We ended up having to re-paint the whole main floor of our house, but after seven years it was due for a new coat anyway. In the software world that's called "Scope Creep".