I spent the morning swinging a 16 pound sledge hammer above my head. Yup, it was as awesome as it might sound. We are still in the process of taking out the old drywall in our building. All the easy stuff (walls) is done and the only thing left to do is two ceilings. That requires breaking holes in the drywall in order to pull it down. The easiest way is to hit it with a hammer. The best hammer to use is a big one that puts large cracks in the drywall. The biggest hammer I’ve got is my 16 pounder. It works great. Like really great. The problem is that it is quite heavy to lift and swing overhead. The ceiling in the kitchen is done, but so am I. It’s tiring work. After the hammer is done there is still plenty of work to do with my 20 oz framing hammer pulling out the drywall and all of the associated nails. It took me about 2 hours to do a chunk of ceiling that was about 10×20 feet. I didn’t love doing it. I didn’t want to do it. But it was necessary in order to move the project forward.

You might be staring at a sheet of paper trying to work out your Step 4 inventory. It ain’t fun. I always tell my people that if it is easy, you probably did it wrong. It’s tedious work. It’s also a lot of heavy lifting. It will leave you sore and exhausted. But when you get to the other side you will realize the benefits of all the hard work. So sit down, grab a pencil (or a hammer!), and…

–Rise Up!!