Despota of Drywall

I finally arrived at St. John's on Saturday night just before dark. I took this picture of the exterior of the Church. The dome is from the original chapel at Point Reyes (and the chapel wasn't much bigger than the dome, so they expanded the Church space under it. At supper Fr. Meletios announced to the monks that I will be staying in the Bishop's quarters...which, he said, shows how highly he regards the drywall work to be done. Coincidentally, Bp Benjamin showed up Sunday afternoon for a brief visit to see the Church. Fortunately he wasn't spending the night. Its only a double bed and I snore.
So....What does the Stealth Bomber

and the Church at St. John's have in common? Well... read on.

Monday morning I started on the sheetrock with two of the monks helping me. We got half of the altar ceiling area done in about 8 hours. About 6 sheets of drywall. (30 to 40 sheets a day is normal quota)... Why?
Find a square corner... I dare you.
It is a little hard to see from this picture, but the ceiling angles up and down in about 7 directions in this small area, and then dies into a round wall in the back behind the altar.

This is Ross, one of the pilgrims who is helping us. He has never hung sheetrock before, but I gave him a crash course on how to read a tape measure and cut drywall, then gave him a drywall knife, a T-square, a screw gun and a saw. He and one of the monks have been doing the closets, columns and lower parts of the walls that are square and straight. Today I graduated him to ceiling details. He kept saying to me, "You know, maybe if you....the ceilings might go faster." I'd say, well...it doesn't quite work that way. It took him about two hours to put up 3 pieces of drywall less than a square foot each. He said, "NOW I understand what you guys have been doing..." Don't judge until you've cut an unequal quadrilateral in my shoes.
You can see from the pictures that, like the stealth bomber, there is not a single equilateral piece of surface anywhere.

The framers did the best they could with the design, but almost none of the angles are "true", so every piece has to be cut, "dry fitted", recut, refitted and then installed. Maybe if I had paid more attention in high school geometry it might go faster, but Euclid is unforgiving. Two degrees or that this way makes a big difference if you want to be able to screw the sheetrock to the framing.
After about 35 hours in 3 days we have a little over half of the ceiling done. In 26 years of drywall work, this is the most difficult job I've ever done, hands down. But.... I'm loving it.