Gotcha Covered: Seabrush Painting

“I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.”

Vincent van Gogh 1853-1890

Although we used very low odor “green” paint by Pittsburgh Paints, the remarkable thing about the interior painting was not the painting itself but the young men who did the work. These young people really give me hope for the future. They work hard and well all day. They are thoughtful in the literal sense of the word: Considering life and behaviors, goals and dreams, and the difference between right and wrong / good and bad. I got to know two of the guys, Josh and Mike, rather well. Kyle was here fewer times, so I wasn’t able to talk as much with him, but I would like to. There’s something about the three of them that makes you want to sit down and hear what they have to say.

Mike and Josh have a band called Atriumantra. I heard some of their music online and liked what I heard. Theirs is not a genre that is in my vocabulary, but I definitely heard some good musicianship and a lot of intriguing variations in rhythm and sounds. These guys have something of value to tell the world, and Vince and I are listening.

HVAC and Electrical Trim-Out

No explanations needed here. Take a look:

We're Floored!

“Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Life’s Little Instruction Book

When we long ago began to think about what to use for flooring, Vince and I discovered that there were a lot of Issues to discuss. Even though this beach is extremely humid with an average humidity about 76%, I like to have doors and windows open when the weather is nice. That means the floors need to be made from something that will remain dimensionally stable, especially since it is common to have the problem of wood floors “cupping” in humidity. This discussion ranged for many years, until Vince and I agreed on using engineered flooring, which has worked out well both in appearance and in function and will allow me the freedom to have the house open from time to time without dire consequences.

SO, what exactly is engineered flooring?

Engineered wood flooring is comprised of two or more layers of wood that are attached in the form of a plank. Laminate, vinyl and veneer floors are often confused with engineered wood floors, but are categorically not an engineered wood floor - laminate uses an image of wood on it's surface, vinyl is plastic formed to look like wood, and veneer uses a thin layer of wood with a core that could be a number of different composite wood products (most commonly, high density fiberboard).Generally, each engineered wood board consists of three or four layers of real wood, which are fixed together in a cross-ply construction. This means that it is more stable than one solid piece of real wood, and will withstand varying temperatures more effectively than solid wood.

After reading up on different manufacturers and speaking with some of the technical folks about the beach environment, we chose Wilsonart as the engineered flooring that would be most likely to survive the humid environment, the dogs, and sandy feet. The Wilsonart flooring is beautiful and looks like a natural hardwood floor, and that was as important to me as the performance. Other issues to consider were scratch resistance slip resistance stain resistance, and strength. Just as with tile, engineered flooring has been tried and tested to specific requirements for business and residential use. The measurements are available from any manufacturer, but it sometimes takes some effort to either find the information on the web-site or to speak with an engineer or technical support person who can clearly related the answers that you need. Just like anything else, it makes a big difference if the homeowner does his homework before venturing into asking questions about a product. After all, there is a need to know what to ask. This product is a floating floor that is glued together but not glued down. Each piece is fitted together and glued with a specific adhesive both for strength and also to help maintain the dimensional stability. Additionally, the flooring was not installed until after the air conditioning was turned on and the planks had been acclimated for 72 hours. We have every reason to believe that the floor will not cup, and we will see how it wears over time.

Once the decision about the type of flooring has been made, the next step is to find a knowledgeable retail store that uses excellent installers. The most wonderful product imaginable can be ruined by a poor installation. After a few bad experiences on the beach, Karl recommended that I sit down with Elizabeth at A and B Carpet One in Kitty Hawk. When I went to the store and asked her about Wilsonart, she said, “Honey, they call me Mrs. Wilsonart around here, because I love the stuff.” Elizabeth has attended several corporate seminars and knows the product and its applications well. When the time came to do the on site measurements for the flooring, Elizabeth came up the beach with Karen, who calmly measured and explained about how long the runs could be before there would need to be a break and which way the flooring should go. She also had some great ideas about products that we could use in the rooms that will have Wilsonart later on. I very much appreciated both of these ladies, both for their great personalities and approaches to me as well as for their knowledge and expertise. This Carpet One store has been owned by Frank Adams for about 35 years. His son, Chris, works at the shop. They were both supportive and helpful when working around the inevitable issues that come with building a house. This is definitely a great place to go for flooring.

Our Wilsonart, carpet, and vinyl flooring was installed by A and A Custom Wood Flooring, owned by two brothers, Art and Andy Garza. I was so impressed with these men. They did beautiful work, but the best part of meeting them was simply that they are such good people. I have said that same thing so many times while writing the blog, but it has been true for so many pieces of the house. Vince and I have met some truly wonderful people, and I am so pleased to have that kind of positive energy throughout the thousands of pieces and parts that have made up the house.

What can I say? We’re FLOORED!

Measure Twice, Cut Once: Finish Carpentry

"Some days you're the hammer, and some days you are the nail."

From time to time during my early childhood, my father worked as a carpenter. Even when carpentry wasn’t his paying job, our garage was filled with wood, tools and a project in progress: Bird houses for the Cub Scouts, shelves for my bedroom, furniture for Barbee, a cabinet for a friend. My grandfather worked as a carpenter all his life, and though I never met him, I have seen a child’s doll cradle that he made in the late 1920’s for his neighbor’s daughter at Christmas. When I started working on the family tree, I found from an early census that my great-great-grandfather started work at age 18 as what he called a “tinker,” and he later listed his job as farmer and carpenter, so I have about 150 or so years of sawdust in my history. I love the smell and feel of wood and am always entranced by all that can be done with different types of wood and a capable carpenter, so I was very interested to meet Brent Slosser and his crew at Outer Banks Finish Carpentry.

The hardest part about deciding on the style of trim work to be done was learning what to call the images I had in mind. I wanted something simple enough to effectively “disappear” but distinctive enough to add shape and texture to the spaces. After an afternoon of hunting through books about trim work, Vince and I decided on a Craftsman style finish, and that turned out to be a good choice for this house. As it is, the work is lovely and can easily stand on its own merit, and the simplicity of the design will allow the addition of other textures or ornaments in time.

Like so many other things, this trade has its own vocabulary. I didn’t have any real knowledge of what to call the pieces and parts that would fit together around the windows and doors or those that would comprise the stairwell. It is hard to understand the difference between a window sill and a window stool, but the most interesting term was a “plinth block,” which sits at the bottom of the door casings. Brent asked me early on if I wanted to use plinth blocks, and I simply had no idea, though the answer turned out to be “no.” “Plinth” sounds like a term that someone mispronounced and forever created a word that sounds like a stifled sneeze!

Take a look:

A Place for Everything

A place for everything and everything in its place.
original quote by Benjamin Franklin

used by Isabella Mary Beeton in The Book of Household Management, 1861

If someone working on a house might want to have everything just so, the person who can make that happen is Jeff Granitzki, his brother and sister, and the team at Island Woodcrafts. Jeff can fill a given space with as many drawers, cubby holes and shelves as you can possibly imagine, beautifully organized and in all sizes, colors and finishes, made by hand in the cabinet shop or ordered from a reputable commercial cabinet shop. Island Woodcrafts has been on the Outer Banks since the early 1970’s and has three locations: The plant in Wanchese, the showroom in Kill Devil Hills, and the original office with showroom in Manteo. I visited all three sites and met Jeff’s brother, Cliff, and his sister, Linda. Island Woodcrafts is a true family business, with the elder Mr. Granitzki only releasing an active role in the late 1990’s. (He will be 90 years old in January!) Mrs. Granitzki also played a key part through the years, and she passed away in 2002.

Island Woodcrafts was founded by Gus Granitzki after he fell in love with the Outer Banks while vacationing on Sandpiper Trace in the family Airstream trailer with his wife, Evelyn, and their children. At the time, Mr. Granitzki was the founding owner of Country Cabinet Shop in Skillman, New Jersey. As a young man in the 1940’s Gus had been a tool and die maker and was later working for RCA Labs when he began making furniture and cabinets at home. That sideline became a successful business, and the Granitzki children grew up with Dad at home in the cabinet shop, Mom helping Dad and making things run smoothly, and kids reared to do chores first and play later. Having grown up during the Depression, Gus was one of those people who never forgot the lesson that consistent hard work can make all the difference between successful survival and utter failure. The decision to sell the business in New Jersey and move wife and younger sons to North Carolina came when Gus was in his early 50’s, and the concept of beginning all over again in a new place was a huge change for the family, especially Mom. In the early 1970’s, Manteo was still a sleepy little coastal town with a big history…quite a change from the Princeton, NJ area. As the cabinet shop grew, the family began to feel more at home and gradually put down North Carolina roots. My romantic side thinks the idea of having Dad at home all the time and the whole family involved in supporting his job sounds like the American dream come true, but I can also imagine that some free and easy time would have been welcome. Cliff told me that having grown up in the '50's and '60's with work being all important in his home life, he never doubts that he can find and keep a job, so that was a good lesson.

When Island Woodcrafts was new, all of the cabinets were custom built in the cabinet shop on Ananias Dare Street in Manteo, first in the family garage and then in their shop next door. In the last 15 years or so, as factory cabinets have improved both in quality and value, more and more people have chosen those cabinets. Island Woodcrafts still makes custom cabinets and is fully equipped as a custom shop, but now about 90% of the cabinets are factory ordered to Jeff’s specifications. I visited the shop in Wanchese and was given demonstrations for the machines by Cliff. It made me wish that I could have afforded to have our new kitchen built to the exact shapes and sizes of the needs that we wished to fill. Island Woodcrafts does beautiful work, and it would be a very special experience and a true family legacy to have that type of special kitchen. Maybe someday…

The guys all tell me that Island Woodcrafts is a great place to work. Most of the craftspeople and installers have been with the Granitzkis for 20 or so years, and the two men who put this new kitchen together for me were the same two who installed the cabinets in our house in Duck. It was great to see them again! These are all good people to spend time with, and it is a treat any time they come out to work at the house.

Vince and I had been hoping to have a big dining room table, 54” by 96”, so that Vince can prepare feast for our friends and family. After shopping for one in our price range with no luck, we asked Jeff and company to create a maple table with a top that would match the counters in the kitchen. I was hesitant, but the table is ideal for what we need here. It was fun to have Island Woodcrafts do the work. As we live in the house, we want to add more cabinets and shelves and special places, and these are the people that we want to provide these pieces for us. Can’t ask for better! Take a look! This is great!

A Creative Touch for the Tile

“If there is one spot of sun spilling onto the floor, a cat will find it and soak it up.”

unknown

There was a time when I thought choosing tile meant deciding which colors would look best in the kitchen and bathrooms. People at the beach would explain that tile works well in a beach house in terms of cleaning but does of course scratch and is slippery when wet. Actually, both of those assessments can be true but are not necessarily true. Floor tile carries with it more than 4,000 years of technique, trial, error, and success so that the intricacies and varieties of choice and quality are nearly endless…and yes, there is tile that will not be scratched by sandy paws nor slipped on with wet feet. Each of these aspects is measurable by the Mohs scale of mineral hardness and the coefficient of friction for slip resistance.

The Mohs scale of mineral hardness was devised in 1812 by the German mineralogist Friedrich Mohs (1773-1839). Mohs selected ten minerals that were readily available and based the scale on their linear order of scratch resistance. Conveniently, Mohs’ name also works as an acronym for “measure of hardness scale,” making it easy to remember. The Mohs characterizes the scratch resistance of various minerals through the ability of a harder material to scratch a softer material. Minerals with small atoms, packed tightly together with strong covalent bonds throughout tend to be the hardest minerals. Qualities of hardness are generally consistent because the chemistry of minerals is generally consistent. A scratch on a mineral is actually a groove produced by micro fractures on the surface of the mineral. It requires either the breaking of bonds or the displacement of atoms. A mineral can only be scratched by a harder substance. A hard mineral can scratch a softer mineral, but a soft mineral can not scratch a harder mineral. Therefore, a relative scale can be established to account for the differences in hardness simply by seeing which mineral scratches another, which is the essence of Mohs’ work. The Mohs Hardness Scale starts with talc at 1 and ends with diamond at 10 and is universally used around the world as a way of distinguishing minerals. Simply put; the higher the number, the harder the mineral. This method is actually ancient, having first been mentioned by Theophrastus in his treatise On Stones in ca 300 BC, followed by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia, written about 77 A.D.

Understanding the hardness scale is important when selecting tile for a beach house, because sand (quartz) is 7 on the moths scale. If the tile has a higher Mohs than seven, it will not be scratched by sand on the floor…really, no matter how hard you try. There are now more sophisticated scales and methods of measuring hardness, but the Mohs remains a reasonable tool for basic applications. Most ceramic tile manufacturers use the Mohs scale to test the scratch and abrasion resistance of the glaze that is applied to the tile and / or the body of the tile. Tile hardness is affected both by materials used and by the firing process. The amount of alumina (aluminum oxide) in clay determines the hardness of the tile. Alumina occurs naturally in some clay, like kaolin, but can be added into other clays to produce a harder tile. During the firing process, a longer and hotter firing eliminates oxygen and slightly shrinks and condenses the tile, which is another factor in tile hardness.

Coefficient of friction is used to measure slipperiness or the lack thereof. The coefficient of friction is a measure of the amount of resistance that a surface exerts on substances moving over it, equal to the ratio between the maximal frictional force that the surface exerts and the force pushing the object toward the surface. The measurement is not always the same for objects that are motionless and objects that are in motion. Motionless objects often experience more friction than moving ones, requiring more force to put them in motion than to sustain them in motion. In other words, a grandson running across a slippery kitchen floor in socks is more likely to fall than the person standing washing dishes at the sink. The static COF is the measurement that applies to objects that are motionless. The kinetic or sliding coefficient of friction is the measure that applies to objects that are in motion. In a COF measurement, a higher number indicates a less slippery surface. A higher COF is created by adding insoluble crystalline materials within the glaze. Textures in the surface of the tile also increase slip resistance. In our house, because we can often have wet surfaces from wet people coming in and out, the tile floors all have a wet COF of about 0.6. We all know when a floor “looks” and “feels” slippery, which is another reasonable first cut at slip resistance.

The important thing to remember about tile hardness and coefficient of friction in household applications is that tile is created with intention to be used in certain areas with given sets of parameters. Wall tiles are not the same as floor tiles, and tiles for outside patios and pool areas should not be the same as those inside the house. Tile manufacturers have developed processes for longer and hotter firing and for adding materials that affect the final product’s performance and durability as well as its beauty. Even though a tile sales person may say that these factors are not important, they are. If in doubt, have a conversation with the technical support or engineering personnel at any given tile manufacturer. The contact information is readily available online.

Once the tile and design has been chosen, which grout and underlayment to use are the next choices to be made. Without question, the grout choice for us was an epoxy grout, rather than the old style cement grouts. We specifically chose Laticrete Spectra-lock, because it is non-staining, non-cracking, helps to prevent leaks between tiles, and doesn’t require sealing. Epoxy grout is more expensive and requires a skilled installer, but the overall addition to the cost is minimal compared to the results and the performance. It is important to keep the comparative cost in perspective as well, since the old style grouts are extremely cheap but require yearly sealing and frequent cleaning. There is definitely an overall cost increase for epoxy grout, but when considering the house costs across the board, the additional amount is minimal for a permanently beautiful and maintenance free floor. As a plus for the aesthetics, epoxy grout has a luster and depth of color that truly outshines the old grouts, especially with glass and stone tiles.

Because cracked ceramic tiles are difficult to repair, it is important to try to prevent cracking. The familiar underlayments like Durock and Hardi-backer do the job of supporting the tile, but they can't prevent shifting and cracking. Because the tile is adhered to that substrate and subject to stresses from building movement or uneven applications, shifting and cracks in both the tile and the old-style grouts will occur. A relatively new product offered by the Schluter company addresses the issues of underlayment using both historic and current data applications. Read this excerpt from the Schluter web-site to get the idea, and then take a look at this video to get the picture:

Ceramic and stone tiles are durable, easy to maintain, and hygienic, representing the ideal surface coverings. However, today's lightweight construction methods can make the installation of hard surface coverings particularly challenging. In order to protect the integrity of the tile assembly, an underlayment that performs multiple functions is required.

Schluter-DITRA is a polyethylene membrane with a grid structure of square cavities, each cut back in a dovetail configuration, and an anchoring fleece laminated to its underside. Schluter-DITRA is bonded to the substrate using thin-set mortar. The anchoring fleece on the underside of Schluter-DITRA is fully engaged in the mortar to provide a mechanical bond to the substrate. Tile is installed over Schluter-DITRA using the thin-bed method in such a way that the mortar becomes mechanically anchored in the square, cutback cavities of the Schluter-DITRA matting.

Designed specifically for ceramic tile and dimension stone installations, Schluter-DITRA serves as an uncoupling layer, waterproofing membrane, and vapor management layer that accommodates moisture from beneath the tile covering. Further, DITRA performs all these functions while still providing adequate support/load distribution for the tile covering. Tile has been successfully installed for thousands of years by incorporating an uncoupling layer, or forgiving shear interface, within the tile assembly. Schluter-DITRA provides uncoupling through its open rib structure, which allows for in-plane movement that effectively neutralizes the differential movement stresses between the substrate and the tile, thus eliminating the major cause of cracking and delaminating of the tiled surface.

Once all the key decisions have been made about the structural aspects of the tile, then the design process can begin. Great tile that has the perfect hardness and slip resistance, installed with epoxy grout and ditra underlayment can still look perfectly awful, so it is important to find a creative and experienced tile designer and installer to make the ideas work. Here on the Outer Banks, the best company to pull everything together is Creative Touch Tile. Pete Sandfort, the owner of the shop, loves tile in all its many varieties and applications. Pete has a wonderful ability to envision and enhance the ideas that his customers bring into the shop. Because he keeps up with the tile industry, Pete is excellent at offering suggestions and tangential ideas that make his designs unique in both style and energy. He’s also fun, and that is priceless! Because Pete has been in the tile business for a long time and has years of installation under his belt, he knows how to create designs that are intricate but also doable for the installer. Our house is very simple in style, so Pete’s challenge from us was to create something simple but beautiful, and we think he succeeded. Pete’s office manager, Kathy Lucia, adds her ebullient personality and knowledge to the choosing process.

In the end, the most important person in the process is the tile installer. If the installer isn’t meticulous and knowledgeable, the project will lose its appeal. Our tile installer, Brian de Pedro, who owns T and T Tile, has the experience and expertise for the job, and he works to make the job beautiful as well. Brian and Tom, another “tile guy” who works with Brian, did a nearly perfect job with our floors. Vince and I have other tile projects that we hope to add over the years. I hope these guys are around to make those ideas come to life when the time comes.

Hanging and Mudding

“A house is made of walls and beams;

a home is built with love and dreams.”

unknown

One of the oddest things about the end of the drywall installation was saying good-bye to the profusion of wires, pipes, vents, brackets, adhesive fillets, flitch plates, and the myriad of little things that we will never see again if we are lucky. Watching me looking at the drywall and hearing my comments on the job, one of the guys reminded me that in a few days this, too, will be completely hidden. There are many layers to completing a house, and this one was a “biggie.”

Our drywall company was Seabreeze Drywall owned by J.D. Crawford, who has been “hanging rock” on the Outer Banks for many years. There were some choices to make in the types of drywall used, with a few compromises along the way. For the generator room, the workshop, and the mechanical room, Type X was specified because of its fire resistance. (Type X paperless was used in the mechanical and generator rooms.) The presence of crystallized water makes all wallboard fire retardant to some degree, but Type X is formulated by adding glass fibers which increase the resistance to fires, especially once the hydrates are spent and the gypsum is left in powder form. Type C drywall is also fire resistant and considered to be a better choice than Type X, depending on the thickness of the board and other factors. Given our remote location, using Type C drywall throughout the house would have been a wonderful safeguard against fire. Because of our ceiling heights and the standard sizes of Type C drywall, that choice became cost prohibitive, leaving us with Type X in critical areas and standard drywall in most of the house. We also used paperless drywall in the bottom of the elevator shaft and purple XP drywall as an increased moisture barrier in the bathrooms. As a precaution against "pops" and for added wall strength, all of the drywall was glued and screwed.

Although I had heard stories about rough drywall guys, I found our two crews to be great folks. The first crew: Scrounge, Bubba, and Roland, came to cut and hang the “rock,” getting that big job done in just three days. That’s amazing, given the glue/screw appliaction, the size of the house and the height and angles of some of the ceilings. The second crew, Steve and Johnny, did the taping, mudding and sanding. Steve and Johnny are brothers who work well together and take tremendous pride in their craft. The impressive thing to me was that they both know a lot about the materials and the history of their trade. Steve explained to me that the bazooka, a mechanized tool that applies tape with “mud” and has a built in cutting tool, was originally made with left-over bazooka parts after World War II, hence the name and the appearance. When I asked Johnny if he knew anything about how long drywall had been used on the Outer Banks, he explained that a lot of knotty pine had been used through the years prior to drywall, because houses shifting in the winds and sand would cause plaster to crack. I wish that I had asked more questions, because this is a subject that is deeper than one might expect! Our specifications called for a Level 4 finish for drywall, which means that all joints and interior angles have tape embedded in joint compound, two separate coats of joint compound applied over all flat joints, and one separate coat of joint compound applied over interior angles. Fastener heads and accessories are covered with three separate coats of joint compound. All joint compound should be smooth and free of tool marks and ridges. It is recommended that the prepared surface be coated with a drywall primer prior to the application of final finishes. In our case, the painter will use a high solids primer prior to painting, which will complete this step for Level 4 and bring the finish up to a Level 5. Because the walls will have a slick finish rather than the textured “knock-down” finish common to this area, the extra care provided by Steve and Johnny will make a big difference.

The many uses of gypsum would make a terrific category on a game show for people who know a lot about unusual topics. Gypsum is used as fertilizer, a soil conditioner, as a binder for fast-dry tennis court clay, a tofu coagulant, a calcium supplement, blackboard chalk, an ingredient in Portland cement, a medicinal component in Chinese medicine, in foot creams, hair products, and is well-known for both plaster and drywall. Gypsum is an amazing and plentiful resource, but whose idea was it, anyway?

The word gypsum is derived from the Greek word meaning "chalk" or "plaster". Gypsum is a common mineral found in sedimentary rock formations in a crystalline form known as calcium sulfate dihydrate. Gypsum is found in layers that were formed under salt water millions of years ago before the water evaporated and left the mineral behind. The oldest traces of plaster renders (likenesses) are 9,000 years old and were found in Anatolia and Syria. Five thousand years ago, the Egyptians burnt gypsum in open-air fires, then crushed it into powder, and finally mixed this powder with water to make jointing material for the blocks of their monuments, such as the magnificent Cheops Pyramid. The ancient Egyptians also created models of plaster taken directly from the human body. Because gypsum from the quarries of the Montmartre district of Paris has long furnished gypsum used for various purposes, this material has been called plaster of Paris.In 1775, the prominent French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier discovered the chemical formula for gypsum: CaSO4,2H2O. The discovery that gypsum consists of calcium sulphate and crystalline water paved the way for the industrial processing of gypsum. Plaster results from the calcination of gypsum, which partially dehydrates to produce a hemi-hydrate (CaSO4 , ½ H2O).

Modern gypsum board has as its predecessor a product called “Sackett Board,” a composite material that was made of layers of thin plaster placed between four plies of wool felt paper. This board was patented in 1894 by Augustine Sackett, the man considered to be the grandfather of the gypsum board manufacturing industry. A sheet of Sackett Board was approximately 1/4 inch thick and 36 inches square. It had open edges, which tended to erode and the felt paper did not provide for a satisfactory wall finish. However, it was an excellent base for the application of gypsum plaster and it soon became a replacement for wooden slat lath in many places. To demonstrate the potential of gypsum plaster, the Alabaster Company used a mixture of gypsum plaster and fiber to finish the exterior of the 1893 Chicago World Columbian Exposition, thus filling the largest single order of gypsum plaster that had ever been completed to that date. In 1894, Sackett patented his manufacturing process for Sackett Board and opened several production facilities over the next eight years. By 1901, he was producing nearly 5 million square feet of board annually. Sensing the promise for the material, a group of small gypsum producers combined to form the United States Gypsum Company. By the end of 1902, the company had a total of 37 operations in the United States. In 1907, the Canadian Gypsum Company was formed, providing access to gypsum deposits in Nova Scotia.In 1909, Sackett sold his company to USG, where he served as a director until he died in 1914. In 1910, a process for wrapping the board edges was created, followed by the elimination of the two inner layers of felt paper, the replacement of the exterior felt facing with a paper-based covering, and the production of board in standard 4-foot widths. By 1916, Sackett Board had evolved into a ready-to-finish panel, and within a year, the production of the original product was discontinued. The demand for gypsum board accelerated during World War I. The first call-up of U.S. troops in 1917 created an urgent need for temporary military housing, both at home and overseas. The military used a variety of building materials to meet this need; however, a barracks fire led military specifiers to prefer gypsum board as a naturally fire-resistant material. Even so, wallboard use for residential housing was slow to gain popularity. After World War II, various industries seemed to simultaneously discover U.S. Gypsum Company and their amazing product, which they called "drywall" for obvious reasons. After the war, many builders were reluctant to return to the time consuming task of plastering walls, when the quicker completion of housing with the use of wallboard was more efficient and definitely more profitable…and homeowners liked it! Through the years, drywall has continued to evolve as the many uses and modifications of gypsum become apparent. From an inauspicious beginning as a basic building material, gypsum board has become the preferred interior finish material in North America. The ability of the basic gypsum mineral to adapt to a variety of circumstances has allowed it to be recast and reformulated over many centuries into a variety of different materials. Adaptive uses for gypsum are still being sought and its future as a building material remains bright. Very interesting!