About a year ago I began thinking of buying a new high-def TV. That triggered a huge home-improvement odyssey.

We wanted to put the existing living room stuff in a large family room adjacent to the hallway. That family room was last decorated in 1970 and badly needed updating. I figured we’d tear off the wood panelling, get the thing dry-walled and be done in a couple of weeks.

I tore off wood panelling to reveal not studs but unfinished drywall. Time for some math:
An 8′ X 4′ panel (32 square feet) of sheetrock/drywall weighs 70.4 pounds.

The room’s about 20 x 14 x 8

280 square feet for the ceiling
160 per side wall x 2 = 320 square feet
112 per end wall x 2 = 224 square feet

That’s 824 square feet.

Divide by 32, that’s 26 sheets roughly, times 70lbs that’s 1800lbs of drywall. I ended up carrying out almost a tonne of drywall single-handedly. And the nails! My God the nails. Thousands of them had to be pulled before the new rock could go up.

So we re-rocked the walls/ceiling, put in new carpet. I then set about installing a new external door. That went quickly. I primed and painted the ceiling & walls (1+3 coats). We put in new carpet and last weekend I got around to installing the trim around the doors and windows.

All that remains really in that room is the baseboard trim. All that meant we could finally move our existing living room into this new room leaving the living room available for a new TV. Right?

Wrong: Before we get a TV, we need to buy a new entertainment center as the flatscreen I have in mind won’t fit in our existing entertainment center. To get a new entertainment center I had to paint the room. Before painting the room I had to clear it out and on and on.

I needed to bite the bullet and do this before Karen’s operation and Halloween and Christmas roll around when we’re going to have more than a full house. This sort of dawned on me last night Thursday. So I’ve spent the weekend clearing out speakers, removing and re-wiring the baseboard heaters, priming, painting etc.  There’s no rest for the wicked but it’ll all be worth it when we’re sitting in our finished house watching Spongebob Squarepants or The Wiggles in glorious 1080p.