The Things I Do for Money...

This is one of my recent projects. We're building 22 foot high walls in a warehouse. This is us sheetrocking part of the wall. Twelve foot sheetrock weighs about 125 pounds a sheet. It is a lot heavier at 55 than it was when I was 35 for some reason.


This is what Thomas (my helper) and I did today....The elevator control room needed a thirteen foot high one hour fire rated ceiling installed (two layers of 5/8" sheetrock on 16" centered metal framing.) We had two step ladders and an extention ladder in a 10 by 7 foot room that had 8 square feet of floor left showing due to transformers, hydraulic controllers, electrical panels etc.. That is Thomas standing on a ladder set on top of one of the control boxes. In the room there are 6 electrical panels, an air conditioner, the hydraulic controller with the open front that is two feet inside the door (note the warning sign...Thanks, Sparky!). To get up and down off of the control boxes and put ladders on top of them, then to frame and sheetrock the ceiling over the open panel, we had to set up an extention ladder 6 inches in front of the open panel and be careful to not back into it on the way up and down while carrying tools and sheetrock. We hung the ceiling in four foot by four foot sheets because there were so many pipes and conduits running through the room we couldn't get full pieces of drywall up in between them. As we say in construction: "This is why I make the BIG money!"
(This is Thomas measuring for the next piece of drywall to go up.)