Finally, some progress! We finished ripping down the paneling and have installed the insulation in the walls and ceilings. This was complicated by the fact that the joists and studs have no particular rhyme or reason, so the fiberglass didn't really stay in place. I whipped out my trusty staple gun, only to find the huge box of staples I bought were the wrong kind. I went to the nearby hardware store but they didn't have the right kind, either. So what did I do? I plunked down $50 for a new staple gun. I felt wasteful and kinda stupid, but it is very nice, as staple guns go.
We tacked up all the fiberglass and started on placement of the metal furring hat channel. This is the narrow u-shaped track (whose profile resembles a hat sort of) that we attach to the joists (via Super Soundproofing Clips), from which drywall will hang. The trick was that we only had 30 sound clips for 5 rows of hat channel, which has to support two layers of 5/8" drywall. Oh, and there are 10 joists that span the room, which is 17' long. You do the math.
I ended using like quantum physics trying to figure out the best placement for each clip. This took hours. Then Buzz suggested that perhaps I was overthinking it a bit, so we took another look and started drilling in the clips. This took like a half hour. Now all that's left is the sheetrock. The 823 pounds of sheetrock …
