The house has gone through an unexpected transformation. With the sheet rock going up, starting on the ground floor, this construction site of wiring within the walls, plastic covered insulation, conduit hanging limp, has transformed into a house.

Construction sites are messy. Extension cords and hoses snake through piles of scrap lumber and unused materials while shingles litter the ground, coffee cups sit upon windowsills. While the walls were unsheathed, the mess of construction mattered not. With the addition of drywall encasing the bare 2×4 walls, the space becomes more real, more imaginable, and I have an unquenchable urge to clean. Sweep, pickup, repeat.

     Preparing the interior for drywall entails visualizing the planes made by the studs, corners, doorways, etc., and seeing where the drywaller needs additional wood to place a screw. Even with walls up, interiors can be in need of much additional, non structural wood.  This “deadwood” allows sheet rock to be properly affixed. So one must be able to picture the closed space even while looking through the transparent space. An unusual exercise.

    The interiors have become manageable constructs. Visually, a house of stud walls, is difficult to parse. I can walk up the stairs and see the bathroom on my right and guest room on my left but being able to see through the walls, it still feels like  a very large space in which someone has nailed 2×4’s vertically in front of me. With the addition of drywall, these spaces are enclosed and formalized. Where once I could see and walk through walls, I now have to obey laws of physics and walk the proscribed paths. This has formalized the space, allowed me to imagine a defined existence within.  See-through walls afford no visual or aural privacy, characteristics essential to a home.

Oh yea…the bald guy speaks….