A follow-up to my Lowe’s rant from Friday: I rented a truck from their local store (cheaper than U-Haul) at 6AM with my brother-in-law and loaded it with all the supplies unavailable in Southern Maryland. We drove south and stopped off to pick up a drywall hoist right before the bridge in Solomons, making it to the FiL’s house by 8:30. By 9 we had all the supplies loaded into the garage and got straight to demolition.

What we had to do was pull down and replace 5 sheets of drywall that had gotten water-damaged from a leaky roof. This was complicated by the fact that the garage, while much cleaner than it had been two years ago, was still full of stuff, and that the original drywall on the ceiling was hung with 4×12′ sheets. (I remember seeing 4×12′ drywall sheets years ago at an old-school lumberyard, but not anytime recently). We started in the middle and worked our way to the front, getting three and a half sheets hung by 2PM, then made a dump/lunch run. After eating—and a very well-timed ice cream sold by an honest to god ice cream truck—we got back at it and hung the final two sheets. Then we raced back over the bridge to return the drywall lift  before the rental store closed, returned to FiL’s house to replace two sheets on the wall, repaired his overhead shelves, and put everything back in the garage. We hit the road at 7:15 and made it back to Lowe’s by 9:30 to return the truck.

It was a job worth doing, and my BiL was super helpful the whole day, but it absolutely wrecked me. I was pretty useless on Sunday, mainly puttering around the trucks and doing some small jobs in the garage. While the drywall hoist was absolutely the best possible thing we could have rented, all the ladder work and moving stuff from one place to another took its toll on me. I’m glad it was a three-day weekend because if I had to go back to work today, I would have been a zombie.

But the garage should be good for a contractor to come in and install an automatic door and opener, something it’s desperately needed for years now, and it will be useful for tool storage and supplies. And that will unlock the ability to get other things done inside the house, which is also desperately needed.