*shudder* I was wrong when I said that I could find a dry waller for less than $1000. It's possible, but very difficult. I called one guy in Lac Du Bonnet three times without answer. Turns out, there's so much business in and around LDB that he can't come into the city for extra work. I called around to a number of places in the city. Those that did answer their phones said that they wouldn't come for anything less than a grand. Apparently, Naomi Campbell's attitude is infectious to the construction industry (though she will get out of bed for blood diamonds...). I did find one company that's too busy but knew someone that'll do it for cash. After a few phone calls, he said that'd come and install our 1 lousy piece of drywall for $400. Seriously. 1 piece of dry wall 8' long and 4' high! It took him four trips to the house over a weekend and a grand total of 47 minutes of work which works out to an incredible $8.51/MINUTE!! It's not bad enough that after all our collective years of post-secondary education that we never learned to shower, but to know that someone working under the table makes 25x what I make just blows my mind. However... to defend the construction industry... my university classes had dozens and dozens of MSc's and PhD's all studying med mic without any jobs to go into. I'm sure his class had maybe ten or twenty people in it, all whom had jobs lined up on the second day they showed up at school.
He wasn't out of the house 15 minutes before I was upstairs with the paint roller and a glint in my eyes!! Once the paint was dry, I tacked down the carpet and put in the baseboards. We're back to where we were 4 months ago, but here's the end result!!
Still a work in progress because we still haven't put up the photos and stuff on the wall, and I want a new computer desk instead of a kitchen table.
My next project, the en suite... or as Brendon calls it "The bathroom that no one else sees so why should we waste time and money decorating it???? Please please please don't make me paint anything else!" Or, as I call it, "The gawd aweful room with the white floors, white walls, white counter, white cupboards, white white white." First step is to paint the melamine cupboard a walnut brown, the same colour as the vase in the corner.
The rest will be a "mushroom" colour and I really like the fake tile floors at Home Depot. My "honey do" list is growing again.... someone warn Brendon!