K's Room

While I was thinking about whether or not we could or could not do the drywall in my daughter's (K's) room, I had a talk with my dad, who lives about five hours away. I asked if he knew anything about framing, and it so happened that he did. I asked if he would be willing to donate a weekend to help us frame up the room. It just so happened that he would. I began to be excited. Maybe we really COULD do this by ourselves.
That said, I waited anxiously for Dad to show up on Friday night. I didn't really expect him to start work right away, since he had been up since four thirty AM, and had worked all day at his own job. But, as I found out, there are still things, even after forty years that I am still learning about my Dad. He arrived and within ten minutes I heard him tearing down the rest of the paneling in K's room. I would have thought he would have been exhausted after a full day of work and a five hour drive on top of that.
Tee and I joined him, and in about fifteen minutes we had the rest of the paneling down and all of the walls exposed. Since Tee and I were celebrating our sixteenth wedding anniversary that night I talked them both into taking a rest then, and coming into the dining room to share some anniversary cake with me and my step mom, or Bonus Mom, as we call her now days.
The next morning, early, I awoke to the sounds of more demolition coming from the bedroom. Dad was already on the job, trying all by himself to remove a huge hearthstone that had taken up about an eighth of the room. The thing was about five feet long and must have weighed two to three hundred pounds. Between the two of us, we took it out to the yard, to be used in pieces in the garden, later on.
Then the framing began. Mostly Tee and my dad did the framing while I ran back and forth to the hardware store for supplies. This put my nose out of joint just a little, since I had been doing most of the reno work up to this point, and now felt like I was being pushed aside. I tried to contain my irritation, however, as I made a second, third, fourth, and then a fifth trip to the store.
One one of those trips, as I was checking out, my mind must have wandered. I had been sent to buy some non treated two by fours, and I looked straight at the lady and asked her if she had any non insulating insulation! She just looked at me blankly. My Bonus Mom looked at me with pity and started laughing. She didn't miss a beat. She looked at the girl behind the counter and said "It's alright, honey, were taking her back to the home, as soon as we get out of here!" Then I just started laughing. Did I really just say noninsulatinginsulation? Maybe I really DO have the early Alzheimer's.
I bricked in the hole where the old wood burning fireplace stood in times past (before us), removed all the loose masonry material, got rid of that awful plastic that was keeping everything up, used mortar to fill in all the large cracks, swept the room and finally we were ready to begin drywalling. That would be an uphill battle all the way.