#Fastpitch Force
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#Creative Softball Team Names#Diamond Divas#Diamond Seekers#Dugout Darlings#Fastpitch Force#Funny Softball Team Names#Marvelous Sluggers#Pitcher’s Pirates#Softball Powerhouses#Softball Team Name Ideas#Swinging Superheroes#Youth Softball Team Names
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Start to softball career
Up to the age of six, I was a tee-ball player. I then experienced my first slow pitch year while playing 8U. It was enjoyable, but I realized I needed much greater competition. That year, I played nearly every position and pitched. My team won the state tournament and concluded the season in first place. After that, I participated in a 10u fastpitch season with Brooklyn Park. My team performed admirably, placing in 6/7 competitions. This year was my first playing Shortstop and Catcher. Being forced to go up to 12u and part with all of my teammates and friends because my birthday fell after the cutoff made me extremely upset. I had chosen to transfer to Storm (Osseo - Maple Grove traveling fastpitch), where I had joined the A team, the top team. There had been a lot of drama, but everyone on my team was good. We finished first in four of the seven competitions we entered. For the following year, this group remained solid and together. With the exception of our new coach, everything remained the same. He was a pretty nice guy by the name of Jack, but he didn't understand a lot about softball, particularly regarding younger children.
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pitch softball bats have got very narrow handles
Baseball bats are a regular component to baseball and softball equipment. But the truth is, baseball and softball bats are not the same in lots of ways. Obviously, for younger softball and baseball players bats are close to similar. Of course, on the adult level there are distinct and important distinctions between bats. And also, there's significant distinctions even in competitive softball. A person will find a recreational league bat is quite distinctive from a fast pitch bat. Slow pitch softball bats have got very narrow handles and huge barrels to produce power. They are also longer in order to generate bat acceleration and even more hitting power. This size of the bat is a main divergence involving softball bats.
When one begins to play at a early age, the softball bat is shorter by around four to five inches in length from a high school or college softball bat. When an older player plays recreational softball on a slo pitch softball team,that softball bat might be four to five in . longer as compared to a high school or college bat.. The gap for an adult fast pitch rec league softball bat would vary by a couple of in . in length and pro competitive baseball will differ around three inches in size. However, there's Extruder screw barrel no variation regarding softball and baseball bats for the junior levels. One of the regulations, that the college softball and baseball rules committee created, will be to lessen the actual hitting power of light weight aluminum baseball and softball bats.
The college softball and baseball rules committee also ruled that the bat weight in oz . of any softball or baseball bat needs to be no less than three in numeric amount of the length of the bat. As a result, a thirty-two in . baseball bat will have to weigh no less than twenty nine ounces.. It may be thirty-two oz, thirty-one oz, thirty oz or twenty nine oz but not less than this. Another big difference between baseball bats and softball bats is in the dimension in the barrels of the bats. Normally the size of a baseball bat barrel is larger in comparison to a fastpitch bat barrel size. Slow pitch softball bats usually are considerably bigger than adult baseball bats. Then there is so labeled Trampoline effect, which implies the effective barrel firmness. It occurs on account of differentiating the elastic properties for both baseballs and softballs. In earlier times, the games of "hardball" and "softball" were given its name because of the grade of "hardness" or softness.
Today, actual competitive softballs are not "soft" whatsoever. In terms of the static and pattern firmness, softballs are found to be basically as hard as baseballs. Alongside distinctions in weights and diameters, they also have different construction and elastic attributes Finally, you most likely do not wish to try your own softball bat in baseball, seeing that its likely that the softball bat could crack or split. Competitive softball bats are unable to hold the forces that derive from a direct blow from a baseball. Besides, you might have the identical effect if you choose to employ your fastpitch bat in slo-pitch; most likely, you'll damage it. Having said that, you could try to utilize a slo-pitch bat in a fast-pitch softball, although thanks to the additional weight you wouldnt be able to swing fast.
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Arctic Blast wins first game in bracket play at NAFA fastpitch tournament
Arctic Blast wins first game in bracket play at NAFA fastpitch tournament
Eden Prairie’s Arctic Blast defeated the Wisconsin’s Onalaska Force 12-1 on July 30 in the first round of bracket play in the NAFA North Nationals 18-and-under girls fastpitch tournament. The tournament is being held at Miller Park in Eden Prairie and Chaska Community Park. After going 1-2 in pool play July 29, the Blast landed in the tournament’s 30-team Silver Division. The Blast sent 12…
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Kopps joins likes of McFadden, Williamson
New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/ncaa-basketball/kopps-joins-likes-of-mcfadden-williamson/
Kopps joins likes of McFadden, Williamson
FAYETTEVILLE — Kevin Kopps’ spectacular 2021 season inspired a study by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette of the best individual seasons in University of Arkansas history.
Kopps allowed 9 earned runs in 89 2/3 innings spanning 33 appearances for a nation’s best ERA of 0.90. The 24-year-old right-hander from Sugar Land, Texas, also led the NCAA with a 0.76 WHIP based on 50 hits and 18 walks allowed.
Kopps struck out 131 batters to average 13.15 strikeouts per nine innings, a rate that ranked 15th in the country. The sixth-year senior credited his workout routine, dietary discipline and beet juice for improving his stamina and bounce-back ability.
He has already earned college player of the year honors by winning the Dick Howser Trophy and from various other outlets, and he’s a favorite to win the Golden Spikes Award given in July to the best amateur baseball player.
In Saturday’s edition, the Democrat-Gazette presented 10 remarkable Razorback seasons in a variety of sports, in alphabetical order: Mike Conley (men’s track and field, 1985); Alistair Cragg (men’s track and field, 2004); Maria Fassi (women’s golf, 2018); Katherine Grable (gymnastics, 2014); Jarrion Lawson (men’s track and field, 2016); Stacy Lewis (women’s golf, 2007); Aurelija Miseviciute (women’s tennis, 2008); Brooke Schultz (swimming and diving, 2018); R.H. Sikes (men’s golf, 1963); and Erick Walder (men’s track and field, 1994).
Today, we tackle football, basketball, baseball and softball for the other half of what we deemed the best individual seasons in UA sports history.
A reminder of the loose criteria: The chosen athletes were to have won an individual NCAA championship or national award, earned All-America honors, been chosen conference player of the year or broken a school record.
The entries are not ranked and are presented in alphabetical order.
Andrew Benintendi, Baseball, 2015
The Razorbacks’ first winner of the Dick Howser Trophy and the Golden Spikes Award, Andrew Benintendi helped send Arkansas back to the College World Series for the first time since 2012.
Benintendi’s monumental season would have been hard to predict, though Dave Van Horn and the Arkansas coaching staff thought he’d probably have a breakout sophomore year.
Benintendi was the top signee in the Razorbacks’ Class of 2013, but he broke the hamate bone in his hand prior to the season and had trouble swinging the bat without pain for a while.
As a freshman, he hit .276 — third on the team behind fellow future major-leaguer Brian Anderson’s .328 — with 1 home run, 27 RBI, 17 stolen bases in 21 tries and 5 outfield assists.
The next year, the left-handed hitting whiz from Cincinnati tore it up. He raised his batting average 100 percentage points to .376, hit 20 home runs, drove in a team-high 57 runs, went 24 of 28 on stolen bases, drew 50 walks against 32 strikeouts and had 2 outfield assists.
Benintendi was the first Razorback to be named SEC player of the year after batting .415 during the regular season and .443 in conference play. He had an NCAA-best .771 slugging percentage entering the postseason and had not struck out in 46 plate appearances entering the SEC Tournament.
Braxton Burnside, Softball, 2021
Braxton Burnside’s whopping final season is still fresh in memory because she just completed it in late May. The Paragould native and graduate student hit .357 with a school-record 25 home runs and 54 RBI.
Burnside’s home run count tied for the SEC lead with Texas A&M’s Hailey Lee and was one shy of the conference record of 26 held by Alabama’s Bailey Hemphill and Mississippi State’s Mia Davidson, both in 2019.
Burnside’s robust .892 slugging percentage was second in the SEC behind Lee. She earned first-team All-America honors by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association and was a first-team All-SEC selection.
A transfer from Missouri, Burnside started all 25 games at shortstop during the covid-19 shortened 2020 season and hit .392 with 3 doubles, 5 home runs, 16 runs and 20 RBI.
Bettye Fiscus, Women’s Basketball, 1985
Razorback women’s hoops was a fledgling sport when Bettye Fiscus arrived in 1981 after leading Wynne to a AAA state championship and earning player of the year honors from the Arkansas Democrat.
Fiscus was a household name in Arkansas by the time she finished her career as the first superstar in the program with a school-record 2,073 points.
Fiscus holds several distinctions, having become the first female athlete inducted into the UA Sports Hall of Honor in 1994 and having her No. 5 jersey retired as the first male or female athlete to be afforded that honor in basketball in 1986.
Fiscus averaged 16.9 or more points every year at Arkansas, capped by her career-best average of 19.8 points in 1984-85.
Dan Hampton, Football, 1978
Before this Cabot native earned the nickname “Danimal” as a regular member of John Madden’s rugged All-Madden team, Dan Hampton was a “Junkyard Dog” on an Arkansas defense that helped the Hogs to big seasons in the mid-to-late 1970s.
The epitome of the era came in Hampton’s junior year of 1977, when the Razorbacks went 11-1, smothered No. 2 Oklahoma 31-6 in the Orange Bowl and finished No. 3 under first-year Coach Lou Holtz.
However, Hampton turned it up a notch individually as a senior in 1978, when he earned first-team All-America honors and was named Southwest Conference Defensive Player of the Year after racking up 98 tackles, including 18 for loss. The Houston Post tabbed Hampton as its SWC player of the year.
A member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2002, Hampton recorded 57 sacks and 10 fumble recoveries as an inside-outside force for the Chicago Bears’ famed 46 defense from 1979-90.
Kevin Kopps, Baseball, 2021
Kopps came out of the gate slowly, allowing an earned run in the season opener against Texas Tech, then turned into college baseball’s most dominant pitcher.
Kopps’ ERA of 0.90 was 0.39 better than the second-place pitcher in the NCAA statistics.
He led Division I with a 0.76 WHIP, a product of walks plus hits allowed divided by innings pitched. Only 36 Division I players have a WHIP lower than 1.0 this season.
The sixth-year senior right-hander, who notched 13.15 strikeouts per nine innings, was named a finalist for the Golden Spikes Award on Thursday along with Vanderbilt starters Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter.
Darren McFadden, Football, 2007
Darren McFadden’s sophomore and junior seasons in 2006 and 2007 represented possibly the most sublime individual campaigns in Razorback athletics.
But which McFadden year was better?
He rushed for 1,647 yards and 14 touchdowns and accounted for 19 touchdowns in 2006. He racked up a school-record 1,830 rushing yards and 16 touchdowns and accounted for 21 touchdowns, including 4 as a passer, as a junior.
McFadden won the Doak Walker Award as the nation’s top running back both seasons and finished as the Heisman Trophy runner-up each year. While he probably was more deserving of the Heisman Trophy over Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith in 2006, rather than Florida’s Tim Tebow in 2007, the latter season was arguably his best. He earned the Walter Camp Trophy that season as the best player in college football.
The Little Rock native played through a rib injury suffered in midseason and had a monster game in the Razorbacks’ 50-48 triple overtime upset at No. 1 LSU in his final regular-season game.
McFadden also tied the SEC single-game rushing record with 321 yards in a 48-36 win over South Carolina on the night “Frank Broyles Field” was dedicated at Reynolds Razorback Stadium.
Arkansas played in the SEC Championship Game during his sophomore year, but McFadden’s 2007 season just might be the best in Razorback history.
Sidney Moncrief, Men’s basketball, 1979
Little Rock’s Sidney Moncrief was one of the famed “Triplets” with Ron Brewer and Marvin Delph on the Razorbacks’ first Final Four team in 1978, where his defense, rebounding and all-around game made him stand out.
With Brewer and Delph gone from the 1979 team, Moncrief increased his productivity and his value as a senior and helped lead Arkansas to the Elite Eight, where it lost in controversial fashion to an Indiana State team headlined by Larry Bird.
Moncrief was a consensus All-American and was named Southwest Conference player of the year in 1978-79 after averaging 22 points, 9.6 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 1.5 steals while leading the Hogs to a 25-5 record.
Moncrief averaged 38.6 minutes, shot 56% from the field and 85.5% from the free-throw line that season. The 6-4 Moncrief held the school scoring record with 2,066 points until it was eclipsed by Todd Day, and his 1,015 career rebounds still stand as the UA record.
The No. 5 pick by the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1979 NBA Draft, Moncrief won the first two NBA Defensive Player of the Year awards in 1983 and ’84, was a five-time NBA All-Star and was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.
Loyd Phillips, Football, 1966
A key performer as a sophomore on the Razorbacks’ 1964 national championship team, Loyd Phillips went on to have two more big seasons.
His work in 1966 as a relentless defensive tackle led to his selection as the Outland Trophy winner as the best lineman in college football. Phillips earned consensus first-team All-America status that season by The Associated Press, American Football Coaches Association, Football Writers Association of America, Sporting News and Walter Camp as well as first-team All-SWC for the third consecutive year.
Phillips posted 97 tackles in 1966 after notching 100 the year before, and he finished with 304 career tackles, including 22 in a game against Tulsa.
The native of Longview, Texas, who died in December was proud to say his teams at Arkansas never lost to Texas.
Clyde Scott, Football/Track and field, 1948
Clyde “Smackover” Scott transferred to Arkansas in 1946 after resigning his post at the U.S. Naval Academy in order to marry Leslie Hampton, whom he met as the reigning Miss Arkansas when he escorted her around Annapolis, Md., while at the pageant.
Scott became a legend with the Razorbacks, an All-American in 1948 as a two-way star and self-taught sprinter on the track team.
Scott rushed for 670 yards on 95 carries to average 7.1 yards per carry in 1948, but his contributions were perhaps more critical on defense, where he was already famous for stopping an LSU ball carrier at the 1 in the 1947 Cotton Bowl to preserve a 0-0 tie with the favored Tigers.
Scott held the UA record in the 100-meter dash at 9.4 seconds, and he won the 110 high hurdles at the NCAA championships with a 13.7 to edge Northwestern’s Bill Porter.
At the London Olympics later that summer, Porter edged Scott in a photo finish, giving the Razorback a silver medal.
Scott, who passed away in Little Rock on Jan. 30, 2018, at age 93, had his No. 12 jersey retired by Athletic Director John Barnhill in 1950, the first Razorback to earn that distinction.
Corliss Williamson, Men’s basketball, 1994
Corliss Williamson, a native of Russellville, was the best player on the best Arkansas basketball team of all time, easily earning a spot on this list.
Williamson averaged a career-high 20.4 points per game as a sophomore during the 1993-94 season, leading the Razorbacks and Coach Nolan Richardson to a 76-72 win over Duke in the NCAA title game in Charlotte, N.C.
The 6-7, 245-pound power forward, given the nickname “Big Nasty” as a teenager, earned Most Outstanding Player honors at the 1994 NCAA Tournament, and he earned consensus All-America honors that year and also in 1995, when the Razorbacks fell to UCLA in the NCAA championship game.
Williamson was named SEC player of the year in his sophomore and junior seasons while helping lead the Razorbacks to SEC West titles all three years.
A longtime NBA assistant coach after serving as head coach at Arkansas Baptist (2009-10) and Central Arkansas (2010-13), Williamson won championships at the AAU, NCAA and NBA (Detroit Pistons, 2004). Williamson was inducted into the UA Hall of Honor in 2009.
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New Mattingly V-Force FRCFP 30/18 Purple Fastpitch Softball Bat (-12) BUY IT NOW – New Mattingly V-Force FRCFP 30/18 Purple Fastpitch Softball Bat (-12)
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Grieving what was
When I was 17 I was in a college prep school with a 4.0, a fastpitch softball pitcher with the prospect of a free ride to college, at the top of my game, and about to take a family vacation. We went on a Disney cruise for 7 days and it was the most fun of any vacation I’ve ever taken. I returned to school with a tan ready for softball season to kick in full force. But when I got there it was all…
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The Obsession by Dawn Brotherton
MWSA Review Pending
Author's Synopsis
Dawn Brotherton is an award-winning author and featured speaker at writing and publishing seminars. When it comes to exceptional writing, Dawn draws on her experience as a retired colonel in the US Air Force as well as a softball coach. Her books include the Jackie Austin Mysteries (The Obsession and Wind the Clock) and the Global Ebook Bronze Award Winner for romance, Untimely Love. She has also completed four books (Trish’s Team; Margie Makes a Difference; Nicole’s New Friend, and Tammy Tries Baseball) in the middle grade Lady Tigers Series about girls’ fastpitch softball, encouraging female athletes to reach for the stars in the game they love.
Under nonfiction, The Road to Publishing is designed to walk writers through the maze of becoming a published author, whether self-publishing, traditional-publishing, or somewhere in between. Dawn is also a contributing author to the non-fiction A-10s over Kosovo, sharing stories from her deployment.
For more information about Dawn’s books and book signings, go to www.DawnBrothertonAuthor.com.
ISBN/ASIN: B00KNBLSR0 ISBN: 978-1-939696-07-6, 978-1-939696-08-3 Book Format(s): Soft cover, Kindle, ePub/iBook Review Genre: Fiction—Mystery/Thriller Number of Pages: 336
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There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE
Did you know you can soundproof a room with drywall? Or install some that can take a (literal) beating? During a recent tour of National Gypsum headquarters in Charlotte, NC, I learned a lot more about what makes their Purple XP drywall products so unique.
Click on these to jump to a section in this post (trying out a new feature with longer posts with lots of info, let me know if you like it):
Fighting Moisture, Mildew, Mold
How Drywall is Made
Nifty Specialty Types of Drywall
Our Drywall Competition at National Gypsum HQ
Anyone out there a fan of the show, How Its Made? As a kid, I found this behind-the-scenes look at how everyday objects are created fascinating. Perhaps, in a small way, it influenced my adolescent brain into a career of showing people how I make/build/fix/renovate. (Funny that I didn’t really think about it until I started writing this last paragraph, but huh — neat!)
Often, when I start working with a brand as part of a blog partnership, I get invited to one of their manufacturing plants. For the brand, it’s one of the better ways to understand their products on a fundamental level: their company’s history, their motivations, their employees, the work that goes into new product development, and all sorts of things that lead up to the last step of using it in a home. For me, it’s an invite to the living version of the show I used to watch as a kid.
This fall, I’ll be working with National Gypsum and using one of their unique types of Purple XP drywall for a new sponsored project. But until I took the trip, I pretty much assumed all drywall was relatively the same. I mean, other than making sure you use the correct thickness for your wall or ceiling, that’s really all there is to it, right?
Turns out — not true! If you see those purple drywall panels in the store, they have a few secrets up their sleeve…
Ask for Purple — Because It’s Moisture, Mold, and Mildew Resistant
It seems like I am learning a lot about water this year: moisture is the enemy of keeping a safe, clean, worry-free home. Indoors and out, bathrooms and kitchens — all of your home regularly interacts with water. At the same time, we need to prevent mildew, mold, and rot. That’s why we use pressure-treated wood and flashing tape on outdoor projects; it’s why polybutylene pipes became a problem; and it’s why we get all freaked out when we see a leak in our ceilings. It’s a very simple concept, and yet it is a very tall order for most manufactured products. I will now and forever remember the quote I heard while in Charlotte:
When owning a home, it’s not a matter of if you will have a moisture problem, it’s when.
Purple XP® drywall: if the name doesn’t mean much to you yet, it’s worth noting. What differs most about this product (other than the noticeable color, of course), is that it’s manufactured to be moisture, mildew, and mold resistant. You may have read about me using paint products with mildew-resistant properties in the past, and the reason is the same: to prevent that very expensive call to a remediation specialist. Toxic mold is not only extremely hazardous to have in the home, but it can be very expensive to remove (and once it’s in the drywall, it has to be ripped out). While paint products are still a good idea, it’s not going to do me much good if the back paper on the drywall is heading to Mold City.
Less than a month later after my trip, I had problems with my air conditioning unit, which forced me to cut a big hole in my ceiling. There was also the time my master bath’s hot water valve popped right off, flooding the room. Brittany from Pretty Handy Girl was also on the trip (I love it when we get to hang out!); she’s had her share of not-so-fun adventures with mold. Eventually, I think every homeowner has a story of close calls or giant disasters!
A rare occasion where we’re hanging out but not covered in muck ;)
Bottom line is, if using a product likes this keeps mold from growing in the first place, and you may not always catch something growing behind your walls, it’s smart to prevent it rather than spend thousands of dollars repairing the damage (or deal with the health effects on those who live in the home).
How Its Made — Purple is… Green?
So, I started this whole post about how things are made. And I definitely learned more about that during the trip. As you might assume from the name National Gypsum or drywall’s other name, “gypsum board,” drywall is created from gypsum. Plenty of it is blasted out of quarries all over the country, which looks a lot like this when holding it in your hand:
But, drywall is also possible due to a byproduct of coal burning power plants. By filtering out and reusing this byproduct, it saves literal tons of waste from landfills. National Gypsum has also been making the paper that goes on the front and back out of recycled materials since the 1960s. And since having to rip out less drywall from mold damage keeps old home materials out of landfills, when you think about it, Purple is actually pretty green.
We got the opportunity to walk the entire length of the (extremely clean and hot) manufacturing center, and it was kind of amazing to see the mix come out in liquid form and be hardened to the touch by the time we walked to the end. They scooped up some of the liquid product for us in cups as well, and we could watch little filaments form on the edges as we walked through. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to film this part of the tour (pretty standard since they don’t want me accidentally capturing something important to their competitors), but I’ll have a video for you guys soon on all of the other cool things we got to see! In the meantime, you can catch this How Its Made version.
Specialty Drywall Types
As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, one of the biggest surprises for me was to learn that there is far more to drywall than I thought. Some are made for areas that get knocked into a lot, and some are made to prevent neighbors from making each other miserable:
XP® — the “normal” XP stuff is meant for most wall applications, and especially in areas where moisture might eventually be a threat, such as bathrooms (non-wet areas), kitchens (non-wet areas), basements, and laundry rooms. If you are building a new home or tearing out walls, I would recommend using it wherever drywall needs to be replaced (after all, the ceiling of my living room is really nowhere near a room I’d think I’d have a moisture issue, and yet, here I am).
Hi-Abuse XP® and Hi-Impact XP® — both of these drywall types are made for areas where the walls might take a beating. But where Hi-Abuse XP is more meant to resist scratches and scuffs (think hallways, stairways, or places where furniture gets moved around), Hi-Impact XP can literally be beaten with a bat and still hold up to its job. It’s got a fiberglass mesh inside the core, so it can withstand some impressive abuse! I know I’m only 5’2″, but I played fastpitch softball growing up… I really hammered this wall, and only broke through after repeatedly hitting it HARD in the same exact spot. Workshops, playrooms, frat houses, maybe the tasting room at a brewery… it’s a perfect match. If you’ve ever had to repair a hole punched through a wall, you know that running some joint compound over a dent is far easier than patching a hole.
SoundBreak XP® — This was my FAVORITE thing to learn about during the trip. Almost all of us are familiar with “thin walls” and noisy neighbors in hotels, apartments, townhomes or condos. Sometimes, it’s as though a neighbor only has to blink and you can hear it through the walls. An interesting piece of info shared was that, with the popularity of mixed-use real estate and the conversion of commercial buildings into high-rise lofts, noise-related lawsuits are becoming much more common for real estate developers. So, a lot of them are starting to pay more attention to the cost vs. risk of using cheaper, lightweight drywall where noise slips right through. But that’s not what got me so excited…
SoundBreak XP Retrofit® Board — THIS. This product is so cool, because it can be applied on TOP of your existing drywall to add a sound barrier! It’s super thin, so it can be installed without demo-ing your walls, which saves a LOT of time and labor. I can think of all sorts of applications for something like this: nursery walls, media rooms, bedrooms (hehe), or even a home office or workshop. With the effort I’ve been putting into doing both written and video tutorials this year, I have a greater need for cutting out background noise (barking dogs & air conditioning/fans are really inconvenient for voice-overs, so I usually have to do it in my master bedroom closet!). And like many of my woodworker friends who find their creativity at night, I would love the opportunity to learn new skills without annoying my neighbors (or the bearded guy sleeping upstairs).
Competition
To give us some “hands-on” demos, they first presented a few pointers on how to better tape drywall seams and install drywall properly. I was very into it, since I have had a little experience with both repairing old drywall and installing new drywall over paneling. Even though I have learned a lot through my own DIY efforts, it’s great to get some solid tips from an expert in the field.
Then, they had the group of us — me, Brittany, and a handful of professional remodelers (that was quite a different experience, since almost all of my trips include only DIYers and this had pros in the mix!) take part in a competition!
Considering that at least one member of our group had decades of experience doing this exact task (and coughcough, used his tape measure to make sure he got exact 12-inches on center when the rest of us were told we couldn’t measure — but no, I’m not bitter ), it wasn’t really a shocker to me that I lost. I was glad to know that I can hold my own in the room, though!
Why I’m Working With Ask for Purple
Before you guys think that I’m going to only sing the virtues of Purple, there is one thing that I will say is a negative, at least in my area: availability. It’s available in big box stores in some places, but where I live, I’ll probably have to order it (especially if it’s something like Retrofit). It’s not that I have an issue with working with local suppliers (I think it’s good to support local business). It’s that I’m no stranger to needing eight trips to get supplies in a single week, and at least one of them will be 15 minutes before closing. So, whenever I consider working with a brand, I heavily weigh whether or not the “extra effort” is worth it. As cool as a product might be, I certainly don’t want to add to my DIY frustrations by the store being closed while there’s still daylight and I have a deadline to meet, or having something only available if I buy in bulk. Pros have enough experience to create a list they can more easily stick to. But that’s not my life, and I don’t want to pretend it is. And it wouldn’t be honest to advocate that you should make extra efforts that I wouldn’t be willing to make.
As you probably guessed, I had zero problem telling the marketing team exactly this. A homeowner needs more than just the product’s benefits or cost; the experience can still be intimidating and frustrating. And that’s ultimately why I chose to work with them. Because a pro can know all day and night why one product might be better than the other and advocate for it with ease. A brand’s sales team can work their magic to get a product into stores to test sales performance. But if there’s something out there that will solve a DIYers problem and we don’t actually know it exists, we can’t go looking for it or ask the store to start carrying it. This is one of those times where it might legit be worth it, and we’ll see once I install!
The post There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE appeared first on Ugly Duckling House.
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There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE
Did you know you can soundproof a room with drywall? Or install some that can take a (literal) beating? During a recent tour of National Gypsum headquarters in Charlotte, NC, I learned a lot more about what makes their Purple XP drywall products so unique.
Click on these to jump to a section in this post (trying out a new feature with longer posts with lots of info, let me know if you like it):
Fighting Moisture, Mildew, Mold
How Drywall is Made
Nifty Specialty Types of Drywall
Our Drywall Competition at National Gypsum HQ
Anyone out there a fan of the show, How Its Made? As a kid, I found this behind-the-scenes look at how everyday objects are created fascinating. Perhaps, in a small way, it influenced my adolescent brain into a career of showing people how I make/build/fix/renovate. (Funny that I didn’t really think about it until I started writing this last paragraph, but huh — neat!)
Often, when I start working with a brand as part of a blog partnership, I get invited to one of their manufacturing plants. For the brand, it’s one of the better ways to understand their products on a fundamental level: their company’s history, their motivations, their employees, the work that goes into new product development, and all sorts of things that lead up to the last step of using it in a home. For me, it’s an invite to the living version of the show I used to watch as a kid.
This fall, I’ll be working with National Gypsum and using one of their unique types of Purple XP drywall for a new sponsored project. But until I took the trip, I pretty much assumed all drywall was relatively the same. I mean, other than making sure you use the correct thickness for your wall or ceiling, that’s really all there is to it, right?
Turns out — not true! If you see those purple drywall panels in the store, they have a few secrets up their sleeve…
Ask for Purple — Because It’s Moisture, Mold, and Mildew Resistant
It seems like I am learning a lot about water this year: moisture is the enemy of keeping a safe, clean, worry-free home. Indoors and out, bathrooms and kitchens — all of your home regularly interacts with water. At the same time, we need to prevent mildew, mold, and rot. That’s why we use pressure-treated wood and flashing tape on outdoor projects; it’s why polybutylene pipes became a problem; and it’s why we get all freaked out when we see a leak in our ceilings. It’s a very simple concept, and yet it is a very tall order for most manufactured products. I will now and forever remember the quote I heard while in Charlotte:
When owning a home, it’s not a matter of if you will have a moisture problem, it’s when.
Purple XP® drywall: if the name doesn’t mean much to you yet, it’s worth noting. What differs most about this product (other than the noticeable color, of course), is that it’s manufactured to be moisture, mildew, and mold resistant. You may have read about me using paint products with mildew-resistant properties in the past, and the reason is the same: to prevent that very expensive call to a remediation specialist. Toxic mold is not only extremely hazardous to have in the home, but it can be very expensive to remove (and once it’s in the drywall, it has to be ripped out). While paint products are still a good idea, it’s not going to do me much good if the back paper on the drywall is heading to Mold City.
Less than a month later after my trip, I had problems with my air conditioning unit, which forced me to cut a big hole in my ceiling. There was also the time my master bath’s hot water valve popped right off, flooding the room. Brittany from Pretty Handy Girl was also on the trip (I love it when we get to hang out!); she’s had her share of not-so-fun adventures with mold. Eventually, I think every homeowner has a story of close calls or giant disasters!
A rare occasion where we’re hanging out but not covered in muck ;)
Bottom line is, if using a product likes this keeps mold from growing in the first place, and you may not always catch something growing behind your walls, it’s smart to prevent it rather than spend thousands of dollars repairing the damage (or deal with the health effects on those who live in the home).
How Its Made — Purple is… Green?
So, I started this whole post about how things are made. And I definitely learned more about that during the trip. As you might assume from the name National Gypsum or drywall’s other name, “gypsum board,” drywall is created from gypsum. Plenty of it is blasted out of quarries all over the country, which looks a lot like this when holding it in your hand:
But, drywall is also possible due to a byproduct of coal burning power plants. By filtering out and reusing this byproduct, it saves literal tons of waste from landfills. National Gypsum has also been making the paper that goes on the front and back out of recycled materials since the 1960s. And since having to rip out less drywall from mold damage keeps old home materials out of landfills, when you think about it, Purple is actually pretty green.
We got the opportunity to walk the entire length of the (extremely clean and hot) manufacturing center, and it was kind of amazing to see the mix come out in liquid form and be hardened to the touch by the time we walked to the end. They scooped up some of the liquid product for us in cups as well, and we could watch little filaments form on the edges as we walked through. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to film this part of the tour (pretty standard since they don’t want me accidentally capturing something important to their competitors), but I’ll have a video for you guys soon on all of the other cool things we got to see! In the meantime, you can catch this How Its Made version.
Specialty Drywall Types
As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, one of the biggest surprises for me was to learn that there is far more to drywall than I thought. Some are made for areas that get knocked into a lot, and some are made to prevent neighbors from making each other miserable:
XP® — the “normal” XP stuff is meant for most wall applications, and especially in areas where moisture might eventually be a threat, such as bathrooms (non-wet areas), kitchens (non-wet areas), basements, and laundry rooms. If you are building a new home or tearing out walls, I would recommend using it wherever drywall needs to be replaced (after all, the ceiling of my living room is really nowhere near a room I’d think I’d have a moisture issue, and yet, here I am).
Hi-Abuse XP® and Hi-Impact XP® — both of these drywall types are made for areas where the walls might take a beating. But where Hi-Abuse XP is more meant to resist scratches and scuffs (think hallways, stairways, or places where furniture gets moved around), Hi-Impact XP can literally be beaten with a bat and still hold up to its job. It’s got a fiberglass mesh inside the core, so it can withstand some impressive abuse! I know I’m only 5’2″, but I played fastpitch softball growing up… I really hammered this wall, and only broke through after repeatedly hitting it HARD in the same exact spot. Workshops, playrooms, frat houses, maybe the tasting room at a brewery… it’s a perfect match. If you’ve ever had to repair a hole punched through a wall, you know that running some joint compound over a dent is far easier than patching a hole.
SoundBreak XP® — This was my FAVORITE thing to learn about during the trip. Almost all of us are familiar with “thin walls” and noisy neighbors in hotels, apartments, townhomes or condos. Sometimes, it’s as though a neighbor only has to blink and you can hear it through the walls. An interesting piece of info shared was that, with the popularity of mixed-use real estate and the conversion of commercial buildings into high-rise lofts, noise-related lawsuits are becoming much more common for real estate developers. So, a lot of them are starting to pay more attention to the cost vs. risk of using cheaper, lightweight drywall where noise slips right through. But that’s not what got me so excited…
SoundBreak XP Retrofit® Board — THIS. This product is so cool, because it can be applied on TOP of your existing drywall to add a sound barrier! It’s super thin, so it can be installed without demo-ing your walls, which saves a LOT of time and labor. I can think of all sorts of applications for something like this: nursery walls, media rooms, bedrooms (hehe), or even a home office or workshop. With the effort I’ve been putting into doing both written and video tutorials this year, I have a greater need for cutting out background noise (barking dogs & air conditioning/fans are really inconvenient for voice-overs, so I usually have to do it in my master bedroom closet!). And like many of my woodworker friends who find their creativity at night, I would love the opportunity to learn new skills without annoying my neighbors (or the bearded guy sleeping upstairs).
Competition
To give us some “hands-on” demos, they first presented a few pointers on how to better tape drywall seams and install drywall properly. I was very into it, since I have had a little experience with both repairing old drywall and installing new drywall over paneling. Even though I have learned a lot through my own DIY efforts, it’s great to get some solid tips from an expert in the field.
Then, they had the group of us — me, Brittany, and a handful of professional remodelers (that was quite a different experience, since almost all of my trips include only DIYers and this had pros in the mix!) take part in a competition!
Considering that at least one member of our group had decades of experience doing this exact task (and coughcough, used his tape measure to make sure he got exact 12-inches on center when the rest of us were told we couldn’t measure — but no, I’m not bitter ), it wasn’t really a shocker to me that I lost. I was glad to know that I can hold my own in the room, though!
Why I’m Working With Ask for Purple
Before you guys think that I’m going to only sing the virtues of Purple, there is one thing that I will say is a negative, at least in my area: availability. It’s available in big box stores in some places, but where I live, I’ll probably have to order it (especially if it’s something like Retrofit). It’s not that I have an issue with working with local suppliers (I think it’s good to support local business). It’s that I’m no stranger to needing eight trips to get supplies in a single week, and at least one of them will be 15 minutes before closing. So, whenever I consider working with a brand, I heavily weigh whether or not the “extra effort” is worth it. As cool as a product might be, I certainly don’t want to add to my DIY frustrations by the store being closed while there’s still daylight and I have a deadline to meet, or having something only available if I buy in bulk. Pros have enough experience to create a list they can more easily stick to. But that’s not my life, and I don’t want to pretend it is. And it wouldn’t be honest to advocate that you should make extra efforts that I wouldn’t be willing to make.
As you probably guessed, I had zero problem telling the marketing team exactly this. A homeowner needs more than just the product’s benefits or cost; the experience can still be intimidating and frustrating. And that’s ultimately why I chose to work with them. Because a pro can know all day and night why one product might be better than the other and advocate for it with ease. A brand’s sales team can work their magic to get a product into stores to test sales performance. But if there’s something out there that will solve a DIYers problem and we don’t actually know it exists, we can’t go looking for it or ask the store to start carrying it. This is one of those times where it might legit be worth it, and we’ll see once I install!
The post There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE appeared first on Ugly Duckling House.
More Where That Came From
How To Fix and Skim Coat Damaged Drywall
How to Remove Wallpaper
Painting Prep after Drywall Repair
More Skim Coating Tips
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There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE
Did you know you can soundproof a room with drywall? Or install some that can take a (literal) beating? During a recent tour of National Gypsum headquarters in Charlotte, NC, I learned a lot more about what makes their Purple XP drywall products so unique.
Click on these to jump to a section in this post (trying out a new feature with longer posts with lots of info, let me know if you like it):
Fighting Moisture, Mildew, Mold
How Drywall is Made
Nifty Specialty Types of Drywall
Our Drywall Competition at National Gypsum HQ
Anyone out there a fan of the show, How Its Made? As a kid, I found this behind-the-scenes look at how everyday objects are created fascinating. Perhaps, in a small way, it influenced my adolescent brain into a career of showing people how I make/build/fix/renovate. (Funny that I didn’t really think about it until I started writing this last paragraph, but huh — neat!)
Often, when I start working with a brand as part of a blog partnership, I get invited to one of their manufacturing plants. For the brand, it’s one of the better ways to understand their products on a fundamental level: their company’s history, their motivations, their employees, the work that goes into new product development, and all sorts of things that lead up to the last step of using it in a home. For me, it’s an invite to the living version of the show I used to watch as a kid.
This fall, I’ll be working with National Gypsum and using one of their unique types of Purple XP drywall for a new sponsored project. But until I took the trip, I pretty much assumed all drywall was relatively the same. I mean, other than making sure you use the correct thickness for your wall or ceiling, that’s really all there is to it, right?
Turns out — not true! If you see those purple drywall panels in the store, they have a few secrets up their sleeve…
Ask for Purple — Because It’s Moisture, Mold, and Mildew Resistant
It seems like I am learning a lot about water this year: moisture is the enemy of keeping a safe, clean, worry-free home. Indoors and out, bathrooms and kitchens — all of your home regularly interacts with water. At the same time, we need to prevent mildew, mold, and rot. That’s why we use pressure-treated wood and flashing tape on outdoor projects; it’s why polybutylene pipes became a problem; and it���s why we get all freaked out when we see a leak in our ceilings. It’s a very simple concept, and yet it is a very tall order for most manufactured products. I will now and forever remember the quote I heard while in Charlotte:
When owning a home, it’s not a matter of if you will have a moisture problem, it’s when.
Purple XP® drywall: if the name doesn’t mean much to you yet, it’s worth noting. What differs most about this product (other than the noticeable color, of course), is that it’s manufactured to be moisture, mildew, and mold resistant. You may have read about me using paint products with mildew-resistant properties in the past, and the reason is the same: to prevent that very expensive call to a remediation specialist. Toxic mold is not only extremely hazardous to have in the home, but it can be very expensive to remove (and once it’s in the drywall, it has to be ripped out). While paint products are still a good idea, it’s not going to do me much good if the back paper on the drywall is heading to Mold City.
Less than a month later after my trip, I had problems with my air conditioning unit, which forced me to cut a big hole in my ceiling. There was also the time my master bath’s hot water valve popped right off, flooding the room. Brittany from Pretty Handy Girl was also on the trip (I love it when we get to hang out!); she’s had her share of not-so-fun adventures with mold. Eventually, I think every homeowner has a story of close calls or giant disasters!
A rare occasion where we’re hanging out but not covered in muck ;)
Bottom line is, if using a product likes this keeps mold from growing in the first place, and you may not always catch something growing behind your walls, it’s smart to prevent it rather than spend thousands of dollars repairing the damage (or deal with the health effects on those who live in the home).
How Its Made — Purple is… Green?
So, I started this whole post about how things are made. And I definitely learned more about that during the trip. As you might assume from the name National Gypsum or drywall’s other name, “gypsum board,” drywall is created from gypsum. Plenty of it is blasted out of quarries all over the country, which looks a lot like this when holding it in your hand:
But, drywall is also possible due to a byproduct of coal burning power plants. By filtering out and reusing this byproduct, it saves literal tons of waste from landfills. National Gypsum has also been making the paper that goes on the front and back out of recycled materials since the 1960s. And since having to rip out less drywall from mold damage keeps old home materials out of landfills, when you think about it, Purple is actually pretty green.
We got the opportunity to walk the entire length of the (extremely clean and hot) manufacturing center, and it was kind of amazing to see the mix come out in liquid form and be hardened to the touch by the time we walked to the end. They scooped up some of the liquid product for us in cups as well, and we could watch little filaments form on the edges as we walked through. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to film this part of the tour (pretty standard since they don’t want me accidentally capturing something important to their competitors), but I’ll have a video for you guys soon on all of the other cool things we got to see! In the meantime, you can catch this How Its Made version.
Specialty Drywall Types
As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, one of the biggest surprises for me was to learn that there is far more to drywall than I thought. Some are made for areas that get knocked into a lot, and some are made to prevent neighbors from making each other miserable:
XP® — the “normal” XP stuff is meant for most wall applications, and especially in areas where moisture might eventually be a threat, such as bathrooms (non-wet areas), kitchens (non-wet areas), basements, and laundry rooms. If you are building a new home or tearing out walls, I would recommend using it wherever drywall needs to be replaced (after all, the ceiling of my living room is really nowhere near a room I’d think I’d have a moisture issue, and yet, here I am).
Hi-Abuse XP® and Hi-Impact XP® — both of these drywall types are made for areas where the walls might take a beating. But where Hi-Abuse XP is more meant to resist scratches and scuffs (think hallways, stairways, or places where furniture gets moved around), Hi-Impact XP can literally be beaten with a bat and still hold up to its job. It’s got a fiberglass mesh inside the core, so it can withstand some impressive abuse! I know I’m only 5’2″, but I played fastpitch softball growing up… I really hammered this wall, and only broke through after repeatedly hitting it HARD in the same exact spot. Workshops, playrooms, frat houses, maybe the tasting room at a brewery… it’s a perfect match. If you’ve ever had to repair a hole punched through a wall, you know that running some joint compound over a dent is far easier than patching a hole.
SoundBreak XP® — This was my FAVORITE thing to learn about during the trip. Almost all of us are familiar with “thin walls” and noisy neighbors in hotels, apartments, townhomes or condos. Sometimes, it’s as though a neighbor only has to blink and you can hear it through the walls. An interesting piece of info shared was that, with the popularity of mixed-use real estate and the conversion of commercial buildings into high-rise lofts, noise-related lawsuits are becoming much more common for real estate developers. So, a lot of them are starting to pay more attention to the cost vs. risk of using cheaper, lightweight drywall where noise slips right through. But that’s not what got me so excited…
SoundBreak XP Retrofit® Board — THIS. This product is so cool, because it can be applied on TOP of your existing drywall to add a sound barrier! It’s super thin, so it can be installed without demo-ing your walls, which saves a LOT of time and labor. I can think of all sorts of applications for something like this: nursery walls, media rooms, bedrooms (hehe), or even a home office or workshop. With the effort I’ve been putting into doing both written and video tutorials this year, I have a greater need for cutting out background noise (barking dogs & air conditioning/fans are really inconvenient for voice-overs, so I usually have to do it in my master bedroom closet!). And like many of my woodworker friends who find their creativity at night, I would love the opportunity to learn new skills without annoying my neighbors (or the bearded guy sleeping upstairs).
Competition
To give us some “hands-on” demos, they first presented a few pointers on how to better tape drywall seams and install drywall properly. I was very into it, since I have had a little experience with both repairing old drywall and installing new drywall over paneling. Even though I have learned a lot through my own DIY efforts, it’s great to get some solid tips from an expert in the field.
Then, they had the group of us — me, Brittany, and a handful of professional remodelers (that was quite a different experience, since almost all of my trips include only DIYers and this had pros in the mix!) take part in a competition!
Considering that at least one member of our group had decades of experience doing this exact task (and coughcough, used his tape measure to make sure he got exact 12-inches on center when the rest of us were told we couldn’t measure — but no, I’m not bitter ), it wasn’t really a shocker to me that I lost. I was glad to know that I can hold my own in the room, though!
Why I’m Working With Ask for Purple
Before you guys think that I’m going to only sing the virtues of Purple, there is one thing that I will say is a negative, at least in my area: availability. It’s available in big box stores in some places, but where I live, I’ll probably have to order it (especially if it’s something like Retrofit). It’s not that I have an issue with working with local suppliers (I think it’s good to support local business). It’s that I’m no stranger to needing eight trips to get supplies in a single week, and at least one of them will be 15 minutes before closing. So, whenever I consider working with a brand, I heavily weigh whether or not the “extra effort” is worth it. As cool as a product might be, I certainly don’t want to add to my DIY frustrations by the store being closed while there’s still daylight and I have a deadline to meet, or having something only available if I buy in bulk. Pros have enough experience to create a list they can more easily stick to. But that’s not my life, and I don’t want to pretend it is. And it wouldn’t be honest to advocate that you should make extra efforts that I wouldn’t be willing to make.
As you probably guessed, I had zero problem telling the marketing team exactly this. A homeowner needs more than just the product’s benefits or cost; the experience can still be intimidating and frustrating. And that’s ultimately why I chose to work with them. Because a pro can know all day and night why one product might be better than the other and advocate for it with ease. A brand’s sales team can work their magic to get a product into stores to test sales performance. But if there’s something out there that will solve a DIYers problem and we don’t actually know it exists, we can’t go looking for it or ask the store to start carrying it. This is one of those times where it might legit be worth it, and we’ll see once I install!
The post There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE appeared first on Ugly Duckling House.
More Where That Came From
How To Fix and Skim Coat Damaged Drywall
How to Remove Wallpaper
Painting Prep after Drywall Repair
More Skim Coating Tips
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There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE
Did you know you can soundproof a room with drywall? Or install some that can take a (literal) beating? During a recent tour of National Gypsum headquarters in Charlotte, NC, I learned a lot more about what makes their Purple XP drywall products so unique.
Click on these to jump to a section in this post (trying out a new feature with longer posts with lots of info, let me know if you like it):
Fighting Moisture, Mildew, Mold
How Drywall is Made
Nifty Specialty Types of Drywall
Our Drywall Competition at National Gypsum HQ
Anyone out there a fan of the show, How Its Made? As a kid, I found this behind-the-scenes look at how everyday objects are created fascinating. Perhaps, in a small way, it influenced my adolescent brain into a career of showing people how I make/build/fix/renovate. (Funny that I didn’t really think about it until I started writing this last paragraph, but huh — neat!)
Often, when I start working with a brand as part of a blog partnership, I get invited to one of their manufacturing plants. For the brand, it’s one of the better ways to understand their products on a fundamental level: their company’s history, their motivations, their employees, the work that goes into new product development, and all sorts of things that lead up to the last step of using it in a home. For me, it’s an invite to the living version of the show I used to watch as a kid.
This fall, I’ll be working with National Gypsum and using one of their unique types of Purple XP drywall for a new sponsored project. But until I took the trip, I pretty much assumed all drywall was relatively the same. I mean, other than making sure you use the correct thickness for your wall or ceiling, that’s really all there is to it, right?
Turns out — not true! If you see those purple drywall panels in the store, they have a few secrets up their sleeve…
Ask for Purple — Because It’s Moisture, Mold, and Mildew Resistant
It seems like I am learning a lot about water this year: moisture is the enemy of keeping a safe, clean, worry-free home. Indoors and out, bathrooms and kitchens — all of your home regularly interacts with water. At the same time, we need to prevent mildew, mold, and rot. That’s why we use pressure-treated wood and flashing tape on outdoor projects; it’s why polybutylene pipes became a problem; and it’s why we get all freaked out when we see a leak in our ceilings. It’s a very simple concept, and yet it is a very tall order for most manufactured products. I will now and forever remember the quote I heard while in Charlotte:
When owning a home, it’s not a matter of if you will have a moisture problem, it’s when.
Purple XP® drywall: if the name doesn’t mean much to you yet, it’s worth noting. What differs most about this product (other than the noticeable color, of course), is that it’s manufactured to be moisture, mildew, and mold resistant. You may have read about me using paint products with mildew-resistant properties in the past, and the reason is the same: to prevent that very expensive call to a remediation specialist. Toxic mold is not only extremely hazardous to have in the home, but it can be very expensive to remove (and once it’s in the drywall, it has to be ripped out). While paint products are still a good idea, it’s not going to do me much good if the back paper on the drywall is heading to Mold City.
Less than a month later after my trip, I had problems with my air conditioning unit, which forced me to cut a big hole in my ceiling. There was also the time my master bath’s hot water valve popped right off, flooding the room. Brittany from Pretty Handy Girl was also on the trip (I love it when we get to hang out!); she’s had her share of not-so-fun adventures with mold. Eventually, I think every homeowner has a story of close calls or giant disasters!
A rare occasion where we’re hanging out but not covered in muck ;)
Bottom line is, if using a product likes this keeps mold from growing in the first place, and you may not always catch something growing behind your walls, it’s smart to prevent it rather than spend thousands of dollars repairing the damage (or deal with the health effects on those who live in the home).
How Its Made — Purple is… Green?
So, I started this whole post about how things are made. And I definitely learned more about that during the trip. As you might assume from the name National Gypsum or drywall’s other name, “gypsum board,” drywall is created from gypsum. Plenty of it is blasted out of quarries all over the country, which looks a lot like this when holding it in your hand:
But, drywall is also possible due to a byproduct of coal burning power plants. By filtering out and reusing this byproduct, it saves literal tons of waste from landfills. National Gypsum has also been making the paper that goes on the front and back out of recycled materials since the 1960s. And since having to rip out less drywall from mold damage keeps old home materials out of landfills, when you think about it, Purple is actually pretty green.
We got the opportunity to walk the entire length of the (extremely clean and hot) manufacturing center, and it was kind of amazing to see the mix come out in liquid form and be hardened to the touch by the time we walked to the end. They scooped up some of the liquid product for us in cups as well, and we could watch little filaments form on the edges as we walked through. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to film this part of the tour (pretty standard since they don’t want me accidentally capturing something important to their competitors), but I’ll have a video for you guys soon on all of the other cool things we got to see! In the meantime, you can catch this How Its Made version.
Specialty Drywall Types
As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, one of the biggest surprises for me was to learn that there is far more to drywall than I thought. Some are made for areas that get knocked into a lot, and some are made to prevent neighbors from making each other miserable:
XP® — the “normal” XP stuff is meant for most wall applications, and especially in areas where moisture might eventually be a threat, such as bathrooms (non-wet areas), kitchens (non-wet areas), basements, and laundry rooms. If you are building a new home or tearing out walls, I would recommend using it wherever drywall needs to be replaced (after all, the ceiling of my living room is really nowhere near a room I’d think I’d have a moisture issue, and yet, here I am).
Hi-Abuse XP® and Hi-Impact XP® — both of these drywall types are made for areas where the walls might take a beating. But where Hi-Abuse XP is more meant to resist scratches and scuffs (think hallways, stairways, or places where furniture gets moved around), Hi-Impact XP can literally be beaten with a bat and still hold up to its job. It’s got a fiberglass mesh inside the core, so it can withstand some impressive abuse! I know I’m only 5’2″, but I played fastpitch softball growing up… I really hammered this wall, and only broke through after repeatedly hitting it HARD in the same exact spot. Workshops, playrooms, frat houses, maybe the tasting room at a brewery… it’s a perfect match. If you’ve ever had to repair a hole punched through a wall, you know that running some joint compound over a dent is far easier than patching a hole.
SoundBreak XP® — This was my FAVORITE thing to learn about during the trip. Almost all of us are familiar with “thin walls” and noisy neighbors in hotels, apartments, townhomes or condos. Sometimes, it’s as though a neighbor only has to blink and you can hear it through the walls. An interesting piece of info shared was that, with the popularity of mixed-use real estate and the conversion of commercial buildings into high-rise lofts, noise-related lawsuits are becoming much more common for real estate developers. So, a lot of them are starting to pay more attention to the cost vs. risk of using cheaper, lightweight drywall where noise slips right through. But that’s not what got me so excited…
SoundBreak XP Retrofit® Board — THIS. This product is so cool, because it can be applied on TOP of your existing drywall to add a sound barrier! It’s super thin, so it can be installed without demo-ing your walls, which saves a LOT of time and labor. I can think of all sorts of applications for something like this: nursery walls, media rooms, bedrooms (hehe), or even a home office or workshop. With the effort I’ve been putting into doing both written and video tutorials this year, I have a greater need for cutting out background noise (barking dogs & air conditioning/fans are really inconvenient for voice-overs, so I usually have to do it in my master bedroom closet!). And like many of my woodworker friends who find their creativity at night, I would love the opportunity to learn new skills without annoying my neighbors (or the bearded guy sleeping upstairs).
Competition
To give us some “hands-on” demos, they first presented a few pointers on how to better tape drywall seams and install drywall properly. I was very into it, since I have had a little experience with both repairing old drywall and installing new drywall over paneling. Even though I have learned a lot through my own DIY efforts, it’s great to get some solid tips from an expert in the field.
Then, they had the group of us — me, Brittany, and a handful of professional remodelers (that was quite a different experience, since almost all of my trips include only DIYers and this had pros in the mix!) take part in a competition!
Considering that at least one member of our group had decades of experience doing this exact task (and coughcough, used his tape measure to make sure he got exact 12-inches on center when the rest of us were told we couldn’t measure — but no, I’m not bitter ), it wasn’t really a shocker to me that I lost. I was glad to know that I can hold my own in the room, though!
Why I’m Working With Ask for Purple
Before you guys think that I’m going to only sing the virtues of Purple, there is one thing that I will say is a negative, at least in my area: availability. It’s available in big box stores in some places, but where I live, I’ll probably have to order it (especially if it’s something like Retrofit). It’s not that I have an issue with working with local suppliers (I think it’s good to support local business). It’s that I’m no stranger to needing eight trips to get supplies in a single week, and at least one of them will be 15 minutes before closing. So, whenever I consider working with a brand, I heavily weigh whether or not the “extra effort” is worth it. As cool as a product might be, I certainly don’t want to add to my DIY frustrations by the store being closed while there’s still daylight and I have a deadline to meet, or having something only available if I buy in bulk. Pros have enough experience to create a list they can more easily stick to. But that’s not my life, and I don’t want to pretend it is. And it wouldn’t be honest to advocate that you should make extra efforts that I wouldn’t be willing to make.
As you probably guessed, I had zero problem telling the marketing team exactly this. A homeowner needs more than just the product’s benefits or cost; the experience can still be intimidating and frustrating. And that’s ultimately why I chose to work with them. Because a pro can know all day and night why one product might be better than the other and advocate for it with ease. A brand’s sales team can work their magic to get a product into stores to test sales performance. But if there’s something out there that will solve a DIYers problem and we don’t actually know it exists, we can’t go looking for it or ask the store to start carrying it. This is one of those times where it might legit be worth it, and we’ll see once I install!
The post There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE appeared first on Ugly Duckling House.
More Where That Came From
How To Fix and Skim Coat Damaged Drywall
How to Remove Wallpaper
Painting Prep after Drywall Repair
More Skim Coating Tips
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There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE
Did you know you can soundproof a room with drywall? Or install some that can take a (literal) beating? During a recent tour of National Gypsum headquarters in Charlotte, NC, I learned a lot more about what makes their Purple XP drywall products so unique.
Click on these to jump to a section in this post (trying out a new feature with longer posts with lots of info, let me know if you like it):
Fighting Moisture, Mildew, Mold
How Drywall is Made
Nifty Specialty Types of Drywall
Our Drywall Competition at National Gypsum HQ
Anyone out there a fan of the show, How Its Made? As a kid, I found this behind-the-scenes look at how everyday objects are created fascinating. Perhaps, in a small way, it influenced my adolescent brain into a career of showing people how I make/build/fix/renovate. (Funny that I didn’t really think about it until I started writing this last paragraph, but huh — neat!)
Often, when I start working with a brand as part of a blog partnership, I get invited to one of their manufacturing plants. For the brand, it’s one of the better ways to understand their products on a fundamental level: their company’s history, their motivations, their employees, the work that goes into new product development, and all sorts of things that lead up to the last step of using it in a home. For me, it’s an invite to the living version of the show I used to watch as a kid.
This fall, I’ll be working with National Gypsum and using one of their unique types of Purple XP drywall for a new sponsored project. But until I took the trip, I pretty much assumed all drywall was relatively the same. I mean, other than making sure you use the correct thickness for your wall or ceiling, that’s really all there is to it, right?
Turns out — not true! If you see those purple drywall panels in the store, they have a few secrets up their sleeve…
Ask for Purple — Because It’s Moisture, Mold, and Mildew Resistant
It seems like I am learning a lot about water this year: moisture is the enemy of keeping a safe, clean, worry-free home. Indoors and out, bathrooms and kitchens — all of your home regularly interacts with water. At the same time, we need to prevent mildew, mold, and rot. That’s why we use pressure-treated wood and flashing tape on outdoor projects; it’s why polybutylene pipes became a problem; and it’s why we get all freaked out when we see a leak in our ceilings. It’s a very simple concept, and yet it is a very tall order for most manufactured products. I will now and forever remember the quote I heard while in Charlotte:
When owning a home, it’s not a matter of if you will have a moisture problem, it’s when.
Purple XP® drywall: if the name doesn’t mean much to you yet, it’s worth noting. What differs most about this product (other than the noticeable color, of course), is that it’s manufactured to be moisture, mildew, and mold resistant. You may have read about me using paint products with mildew-resistant properties in the past, and the reason is the same: to prevent that very expensive call to a remediation specialist. Toxic mold is not only extremely hazardous to have in the home, but it can be very expensive to remove (and once it’s in the drywall, it has to be ripped out). While paint products are still a good idea, it’s not going to do me much good if the back paper on the drywall is heading to Mold City.
Less than a month later after my trip, I had problems with my air conditioning unit, which forced me to cut a big hole in my ceiling. There was also the time my master bath’s hot water valve popped right off, flooding the room. Brittany from Pretty Handy Girl was also on the trip (I love it when we get to hang out!); she’s had her share of not-so-fun adventures with mold. Eventually, I think every homeowner has a story of close calls or giant disasters!
A rare occasion where we’re hanging out but not covered in muck ;)
Bottom line is, if using a product likes this keeps mold from growing in the first place, and you may not always catch something growing behind your walls, it’s smart to prevent it rather than spend thousands of dollars repairing the damage (or deal with the health effects on those who live in the home).
How Its Made — Purple is… Green?
So, I started this whole post about how things are made. And I definitely learned more about that during the trip. As you might assume from the name National Gypsum or drywall’s other name, “gypsum board,” drywall is created from gypsum. Plenty of it is blasted out of quarries all over the country, which looks a lot like this when holding it in your hand:
But, drywall is also possible due to a byproduct of coal burning power plants. By filtering out and reusing this byproduct, it saves literal tons of waste from landfills. National Gypsum has also been making the paper that goes on the front and back out of recycled materials since the 1960s. And since having to rip out less drywall from mold damage keeps old home materials out of landfills, when you think about it, Purple is actually pretty green.
We got the opportunity to walk the entire length of the (extremely clean and hot) manufacturing center, and it was kind of amazing to see the mix come out in liquid form and be hardened to the touch by the time we walked to the end. They scooped up some of the liquid product for us in cups as well, and we could watch little filaments form on the edges as we walked through. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to film this part of the tour (pretty standard since they don’t want me accidentally capturing something important to their competitors), but I’ll have a video for you guys soon on all of the other cool things we got to see! In the meantime, you can catch this How Its Made version.
Specialty Drywall Types
As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, one of the biggest surprises for me was to learn that there is far more to drywall than I thought. Some are made for areas that get knocked into a lot, and some are made to prevent neighbors from making each other miserable:
XP® — the “normal” XP stuff is meant for most wall applications, and especially in areas where moisture might eventually be a threat, such as bathrooms (non-wet areas), kitchens (non-wet areas), basements, and laundry rooms. If you are building a new home or tearing out walls, I would recommend using it wherever drywall needs to be replaced (after all, the ceiling of my living room is really nowhere near a room I’d think I’d have a moisture issue, and yet, here I am).
Hi-Abuse XP® and Hi-Impact XP® — both of these drywall types are made for areas where the walls might take a beating. But where Hi-Abuse XP is more meant to resist scratches and scuffs (think hallways, stairways, or places where furniture gets moved around), Hi-Impact XP can literally be beaten with a bat and still hold up to its job. It’s got a fiberglass mesh inside the core, so it can withstand some impressive abuse! I know I’m only 5’2″, but I played fastpitch softball growing up… I really hammered this wall, and only broke through after repeatedly hitting it HARD in the same exact spot. Workshops, playrooms, frat houses, maybe the tasting room at a brewery… it’s a perfect match. If you’ve ever had to repair a hole punched through a wall, you know that running some joint compound over a dent is far easier than patching a hole.
SoundBreak XP® — This was my FAVORITE thing to learn about during the trip. Almost all of us are familiar with “thin walls” and noisy neighbors in hotels, apartments, townhomes or condos. Sometimes, it’s as though a neighbor only has to blink and you can hear it through the walls. An interesting piece of info shared was that, with the popularity of mixed-use real estate and the conversion of commercial buildings into high-rise lofts, noise-related lawsuits are becoming much more common for real estate developers. So, a lot of them are starting to pay more attention to the cost vs. risk of using cheaper, lightweight drywall where noise slips right through. But that’s not what got me so excited…
SoundBreak XP Retrofit® Board — THIS. This product is so cool, because it can be applied on TOP of your existing drywall to add a sound barrier! It’s super thin, so it can be installed without demo-ing your walls, which saves a LOT of time and labor. I can think of all sorts of applications for something like this: nursery walls, media rooms, bedrooms (hehe), or even a home office or workshop. With the effort I’ve been putting into doing both written and video tutorials this year, I have a greater need for cutting out background noise (barking dogs & air conditioning/fans are really inconvenient for voice-overs, so I usually have to do it in my master bedroom closet!). And like many of my woodworker friends who find their creativity at night, I would love the opportunity to learn new skills without annoying my neighbors (or the bearded guy sleeping upstairs).
Competition
To give us some “hands-on” demos, they first presented a few pointers on how to better tape drywall seams and install drywall properly. I was very into it, since I have had a little experience with both repairing old drywall and installing new drywall over paneling. Even though I have learned a lot through my own DIY efforts, it’s great to get some solid tips from an expert in the field.
Then, they had the group of us — me, Brittany, and a handful of professional remodelers (that was quite a different experience, since almost all of my trips include only DIYers and this had pros in the mix!) take part in a competition!
Considering that at least one member of our group had decades of experience doing this exact task (and coughcough, used his tape measure to make sure he got exact 12-inches on center when the rest of us were told we couldn’t measure — but no, I’m not bitter ), it wasn’t really a shocker to me that I lost. I was glad to know that I can hold my own in the room, though!
Why I’m Working With Ask for Purple
Before you guys think that I’m going to only sing the virtues of Purple, there is one thing that I will say is a negative, at least in my area: availability. It’s available in big box stores in some places, but where I live, I’ll probably have to order it (especially if it’s something like Retrofit). It’s not that I have an issue with working with local suppliers (I think it’s good to support local business). It’s that I’m no stranger to needing eight trips to get supplies in a single week, and at least one of them will be 15 minutes before closing. So, whenever I consider working with a brand, I heavily weigh whether or not the “extra effort” is worth it. As cool as a product might be, I certainly don’t want to add to my DIY frustrations by the store being closed while there’s still daylight and I have a deadline to meet, or having something only available if I buy in bulk. Pros have enough experience to create a list they can more easily stick to. But that’s not my life, and I don’t want to pretend it is. And it wouldn’t be honest to advocate that you should make extra efforts that I wouldn’t be willing to make.
As you probably guessed, I had zero problem telling the marketing team exactly this. A homeowner needs more than just the product’s benefits or cost; the experience can still be intimidating and frustrating. And that’s ultimately why I chose to work with them. Because a pro can know all day and night why one product might be better than the other and advocate for it with ease. A brand’s sales team can work their magic to get a product into stores to test sales performance. But if there’s something out there that will solve a DIYers problem and we don’t actually know it exists, we can’t go looking for it or ask the store to start carrying it. This is one of those times where it might legit be worth it, and we’ll see once I install!
The post There’s a Drywall for That? | Ask for PURPLE appeared first on Ugly Duckling House.
More Where That Came From
How To Fix and Skim Coat Damaged Drywall
How to Remove Wallpaper
Painting Prep after Drywall Repair
More Skim Coating Tips
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'You have to just love it'
New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/sports/you-have-to-just-love-it/
'You have to just love it'
Jazz Chisholm knows that baseball is difficult, that there remains a significant gulf he must cross to match his significant talent and overwhelming charisma to his production.
Right now, this is who Jazz is: A rookie infielder for the Miami Marlins whose stat line says his production is just above league average, but his swag suggests he’s anything but.
This is who Jazz could be: A dynamic, powerful, five-tool force, whose desire to disrupt the game could vault him atop the short list of burgeoning baseball stars with ever-elusive crossover appeal.
This is how he plans to get there: By sacrificing nothing – certainly not the vicious bat speed from his swing that ensures the home runs he does hit go very, very far. And certainly not the exuberance that vaulted him from the Bahamas to the big leagues, endearing him to fans and perhaps enabling him to join some of his athletic heroes – Kobe, LeBron, KD – as a wonder known only by one name.
And what’s the tune Jazz lives by?
“To this day,” he says, “I just always try to tell kids to be themselves. Don’t let nobody change you. You go out there and play the way you want to go play.
“That’s why I always do the crazy hair colors, I do my dances and I just have fun out there because I just want everybody to know, it’s OK to have fun on the baseball field.
“You know?”
If you don’t, you probably will soon.
Jazz Chisholm looks on before a game against the Braves.
Mark Brown, Getty Images
‘Why not bring it into the game?’
Perhaps you found out on Opening Day, when Chisholm fulfilled a promise made to Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara. Chisholm, whose hair changes color with the ease of South Florida weather patterns, was planning a platinum blonde look.
Yet as spring training wound down and Chisholm – who debuted on Sept. 1 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 – had a shot to make his first Opening Day roster, Alcantara had a suggestion.
Make the team, he said, and you dye your hair blue.
“I said, ‘I got you,’” Chisholm recalls. “It was history from there.”
Chisholm came through, breaking camp with the squad and showing up for the opener with a tone resembling a Louie-Bloo Raspberry Otter Pop.
Perhaps you noticed a couple weeks later, when Chisholm hit his second home run of the season, a towering shot off Atlanta’s Charlie Morton, and then, befitting his significant basketball skills, debuted a euro step as he crossed home plate.
Contrived?
Nope. Just a part of his personality, reflexive as a fist bump or handshake.
“I will walk around the clubhouse euro-stepping on people,” he says. “I’ll be in front of someone and last second, I’ll give ‘em a euro, you know, like, ‘Get out of the way.’ It’s something I do all day, every day.
“So why not bring it into the game? Why not misdirect it going into home, and then step on it?”
Chisholm has nine homers and 10 steals in 51 games.
Jasen Vinlove, USA TODAY Sports
It’s not like Chisholm is pimping home runs that scraped the top of the wall.
He is the only player this season to go deep on pitches of at least 100 mph, doing it first off the great Jacob deGrom on April 18 and then the Phillies’ Jose Alvarado a month later. He is, in fact, the only player with two such homers since pitch-tracking began in 2008.
Listed at 5-11 and 184 pounds, Chisholm – full name Jasrado Hermis Arrington Chisholm – seemingly manifested his skills by watching his grandmother play softball.
Yeah, Grandma could turn on one.
“The small person with the pop? Yeah, I think I got that from her, too,” he says.
Patricia Coakley, now 77, played on the Bahamian national softball team, and played the sport long enough for Jazz to see her compete both in slow- and fastpitch formats. He saw himself in her, from the aforementioned quick bat to the tenacious baserunning approach to her play at shortstop.
And so when Chisholm was barely old enough to hold a bat, he called dibs on the position, fully intending to never leave.
“I just loved seeing her play shortstop. I fell in love with watching her, too,” he says. “It was always like that from when I was probably 4 and 5 – just run straight to shortstop.
“Grandma’s a shortstop, I’m a shortstop.”
Clearly, he picked an excellent role model, though there weren’t many others locally. Just eight players from the Bahamas preceded Chisholm to the majors, with infielder Andre Rodgers – who played from 1967 to ’77 – the only one to hold down anything resembling a full-time role. Antoan Richardson was the most recent, serving largely as a pinch runner from 2011 to 2014, and he’s now a coach for the San Francisco Giants.
Young Jazz focused on his grandmother’s exploits and fixated on televised games featuring Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds and Derek Jeter.
And was convinced he’d play on their level.
“I always told myself that I was going to be a big leaguer, from a very young age,” he says. “It was not really tough believing I was going to be a big leaguer.”
Chisholm played plenty of ball stateside as a child, often in Miami, and attended a prep school in Kansas for a spell, eventually signing with Arizona as an international free agent. While he’s sanguine about his own rise, he’s humbled when he ponders his impact back home.
“Every time I go to the Bahamas I see a little kid telling me, ‘Hey, you made me start playing baseball,’” he says. “It makes me smile nonstop when I hear that.”
They have a dynamic hero to follow, even if he’s an unfinished product. Chisholm is on pace to hit 20 home runs and steal 20 bases this season; he clubbed his ninth home run of the season Thursday night in a loss to the Washington Nationals, pushing his batting average to .258 and his OPS to .766.
With just 276 plate appearances behind him, Chisholm has room to grow. That makes him a good match for Miami, which acquired him from Arizona for pitcher Zac Gallen in 2019. “I love the people out here,” he says. “This is just the life that I feel like I was here to live. My kind of place.”
Chisholm celebrates a home run against the Mets.
Andy Marlin, USA TODAY Sports
Fresh fish
The Marlins are 31-43 and lagging in the NL East, a pitching-centric club with a lineup that looks emaciated even within this season’s historically grim league environment.
Yet for a franchise dogged for decades by ham-handed ownership, they have a decidedly fresh feel.
They have a quietly beautiful ballpark still not yet a decade old, yet new owner Bruce Sherman bears none of the blame for bamboozling the city into a hideously bad stadium deal. In Jeter they have a CEO with star power but also patience, and the forward-thinking mentality to hire the first woman as a major league GM, the highly-regarded Kim Ng.
Alcantara and rookie lefty Trevor Rogers are worthy aces, with the injured Sixto Sanchez also capable of holding that role. At Class AA Jacksonville, pitching prospects Max Meyer and Edward Cabrera join outfielder J.J. Bleday, all consensus top 100 prospects nearing the big leagues.
In Miami, Chisholm defers to veterans such as Jesus Aguilar and Miguel Rojas, who when healthy nudges Chisholm to second base. From a baseball standpoint, Chisholm says he goes to great lengths not to “get cocky with the veterans.”
Yet they share a desire to keep things loose, from the clubhouse to the kicks; Rojas has long used social media to amplify his shoe game, while Chisholm has donned footwear celebrating concepts as disparate as Miami Vice and Oreo cookies.
Earlier this week, he debuted a gold chain that commemorated a remarkable leaping catch against the Tampa Bay Rays.
“The Miami Marlins’ whole roster right now – you look at what they’re wearing on their feet, even down to the coaches sometimes, it’s just straight heat, I’m not going to lie,” says Chisholm. “Everybody is just into that stuff – having the swag, having fun on the field.”
It all may seem a bit excessive for a second-division club, yet the Marlins also made the playoffs in 2020 and swept the Chicago Cubs out of them. Manager Don Mattingly says the veteran tone set by the likes of Aguilar and Rojas “helps your club create an atmosphere that guys like playing in.” He is confident Chisholm will develop greater consistency both in routine and performance, calling his development arc “pretty normal” for a first-year player.
As for Chisholm, he’s prepared for the roller-coaster the game provides. His homer Thursday broke a 15-day streak without a dinger, a period filled with too many weak ground balls. It is a hallmark of the game he chose that he might go days without making an impact, when instead of euro stepping over the plate he’s making an abrupt right turn back to the dugout.
He cannot control his fate in a manner that LeBron can or Kobe could, and if he’s given just one pitch to turn and burn on, he may very well miss it.
Chisholm knows this well and chooses not to dwell on it. Like the island kid who just knew he’d be a big leaguer some day, Chisholm may be right when he believes this game will reward his undying love for it.
“It’s not frustrating,” he says of failure, “because you know how hard the game is. It’s just like, ‘Man, I’m just praying I get another one. Give me another one.’ It’s not really like, ‘Man, I missed my only chance.’ No, because you still got two more strikes to play with. And you might get the worst swing of your life off, but it can be a hit.
“This game can really mess with your mind – because you could be hitting the ball as hard as you want every day and not get a hit. And then you can go break four bats in one day and have four hits. That’s why you have to just love it. Because even though it takes away, it gives back.
“And it gives back big.”
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There’s a Drywall for That? | Touring National Gypsum
Did you know you can soundproof a room with drywall? Or install some that can take a (literal) beating? During a recent tour of National Gypsum headquarters in Charlotte, NC, I learned a lot more about what makes their Purple XP drywall products so unique.
Click on these to jump to a section in this post (trying out a new feature with longer posts with lots of info, let me know if you like it):
Fighting Moisture, Mildew, Mold
How Drywall is Made
Nifty Specialty Types of Drywall
Our Drywall Competition at National Gypsum HQ
Anyone out there a fan of the show, How Its Made? As a kid, I found this behind-the-scenes look at how everyday objects are created fascinating. Perhaps, in a small way, it influenced my adolescent brain into a career of showing people how I make/build/fix/renovate. (Funny that I didn’t really think about it until I started writing this last paragraph, but huh — neat!)
Often, when I start working with a brand as part of a blog partnership, I get invited to one of their manufacturing plants. For the brand, it’s one of the better ways to understand their products on a fundamental level: their company’s history, their motivations, their employees, the work that goes into new product development, and all sorts of things that lead up to the last step of using it in a home. For me, it’s an invite to the living version of the show I used to watch as a kid.
This fall, I’ll be working with National Gypsum and using one of their unique types of Purple XP drywall for a new sponsored project. But until I took the trip, I pretty much assumed all drywall was relatively the same. I mean, other than making sure you use the correct thickness for your wall or ceiling, that’s really all there is to it, right?
Turns out — not true! If you see those purple drywall panels in the store, they have a few secrets up their sleeve…
Ask for Purple — Because It’s Moisture, Mold, and Mildew Resistant
It seems like I am learning a lot about water this year: moisture is the enemy of keeping a safe, clean, worry-free home. Indoors and out, bathrooms and kitchens — all of your home regularly interacts with water. At the same time, we need to prevent mildew, mold, and rot. That’s why we use pressure-treated wood and flashing tape on outdoor projects; it’s why polybutylene pipes became a problem; and it’s why we get all freaked out when we see a leak in our ceilings. It’s a very simple concept, and yet it is a very tall order for most manufactured products. I will now and forever remember the quote I heard while in Charlotte:
When owning a home, it’s not a matter of if you will have a moisture problem, it’s when.
Purple XP® drywall: if the name doesn’t mean much to you yet, it’s worth noting. What differs most about this product (other than the noticeable color, of course), is that it’s manufactured to be moisture, mildew, and mold resistant. You may have read about me using paint products with mildew-resistant properties in the past, and the reason is the same: to prevent that very expensive call to a remediation specialist. Toxic mold is not only extremely hazardous to have in the home, but it can be very expensive to remove (and once it’s in the drywall, it has to be ripped out). While paint products are still a good idea, it’s not going to do me much good if the back paper on the drywall is heading to Mold City.
Less than a month later after my trip, I had problems with my air conditioning unit, which forced me to cut a big hole in my ceiling. There was also the time my master bath’s hot water valve popped right off, flooding the room. Brittany from Pretty Handy Girl was also on the trip (I love it when we get to hang out!); she’s had her share of not-so-fun adventures with mold. Eventually, I think every homeowner has a story of close calls or giant disasters!
A rare occasion where we’re hanging out but not covered in muck ;)
Bottom line is, if using a product likes this keeps mold from growing in the first place, and you may not always catch something growing behind your walls, it’s smart to prevent it rather than spend thousands of dollars repairing the damage (or deal with the health effects on those who live in the home).
How Its Made — Purple is… Green?
So, I started this whole post about how things are made. And I definitely learned more about that during the trip. As you might assume from the name National Gypsum or drywall’s other name, “gypsum board,” drywall is created from gypsum. Plenty of it is blasted out of quarries all over the country, which looks a lot like this when holding it in your hand:
But, drywall is also possible due to a byproduct of coal burning power plants. By filtering out and reusing this byproduct, it saves literal tons of waste from landfills. National Gypsum has also been making the paper that goes on the front and back out of recycled materials since the 1960s. And since having to rip out less drywall from mold damage keeps old home materials out of landfills, when you think about it, Purple is actually pretty green.
We got the opportunity to walk the entire length of the (extremely clean and hot) manufacturing center, and it was kind of amazing to see the mix come out in liquid form and be hardened to the touch by the time we walked to the end. They scooped up some of the liquid product for us in cups as well, and we could watch little filaments form on the edges as we walked through. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to film this part of the tour (pretty standard since they don’t want me accidentally capturing something important to their competitors), but I’ll have a video for you guys soon on all of the other cool things we got to see! In the meantime, you can catch this How Its Made version.
Specialty Drywall Types
As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, one of the biggest surprises for me was to learn that there is far more to drywall than I thought. Some are made for areas that get knocked into a lot, and some are made to prevent neighbors from making each other miserable:
XP® — the “normal” XP stuff is meant for most wall applications, and especially in areas where moisture might eventually be a threat, such as bathrooms (non-wet areas), kitchens (non-wet areas), basements, and laundry rooms. If you are building a new home or tearing out walls, I would recommend using it wherever drywall needs to be replaced (after all, the ceiling of my living room is really nowhere near a room I’d think I’d have a moisture issue, and yet, here I am).
Hi-Abuse XP® and Hi-Impact XP® — both of these drywall types are made for areas where the walls might take a beating. But where Hi-Abuse XP is more meant to resist scratches and scuffs (think hallways, stairways, or places where furniture gets moved around), Hi-Impact XP can literally be beaten with a bat and still hold up to its job. It’s got a fiberglass mesh inside the core, so it can withstand some impressive abuse! I know I’m only 5’2″, but I played fastpitch softball growing up… I really hammered this wall, and only broke through after repeatedly hitting it HARD in the same exact spot. Workshops, playrooms, frat houses, maybe the tasting room at a brewery… it’s a perfect match. If you’ve ever had to repair a hole punched through a wall, you know that running some joint compound over a dent is far easier than patching a hole.
SoundBreak XP® — This was my FAVORITE thing to learn about during the trip. Almost all of us are familiar with “thin walls” and noisy neighbors in hotels, apartments, townhomes or condos. Sometimes, it’s as though a neighbor only has to blink and you can hear it through the walls. An interesting piece of info shared was that, with the popularity of mixed-use real estate and the conversion of commercial buildings into high-rise lofts, noise-related lawsuits are becoming much more common for real estate developers. So, a lot of them are starting to pay more attention to the cost vs. risk of using cheaper, lightweight drywall where noise slips right through. But that’s not what got me so excited…
SoundBreak XP Retrofit® Board — THIS. This product is so cool, because it can be applied on TOP of your existing drywall to add a sound barrier! It’s super thin, so it can be installed without demo-ing your walls, which saves a LOT of time and labor. I can think of all sorts of applications for something like this: nursery walls, media rooms, bedrooms (hehe), or even a home office or workshop. With the effort I’ve been putting into doing both written and video tutorials this year, I have a greater need for cutting out background noise (barking dogs & air conditioning/fans are really inconvenient for voice-overs, so I usually have to do it in my master bedroom closet!). And like many of my woodworker friends who find their creativity at night, I would love the opportunity to learn new skills without annoying my neighbors (or the bearded guy sleeping upstairs).
Competition
To give us some “hands-on” demos, they first presented a few pointers on how to better tape drywall seams and install drywall properly. I was very into it, since I have had a little experience with both repairing old drywall and installing new drywall over paneling. Even though I have learned a lot through my own DIY efforts, it’s great to get some solid tips from an expert in the field.
Then, they had the group of us — me, Brittany, and a handful of professional remodelers (that was quite a different experience, since almost all of my trips include only DIYers and this had pros in the mix!) take part in a competition!
Considering that at least one member of our group had decades of experience doing this exact task (and coughcough, used his tape measure to make sure he got exact 12-inches on center when the rest of us were told we couldn’t measure — but no, I’m not bitter ), it wasn’t really a shocker to me that I lost. I was glad to know that I can hold my own in the room, though!
Why I’m Working With Ask for Purple
Before you guys think that I’m going to only sing the virtues of Purple, there is one thing that I will say is a negative, at least in my area: availability. It’s available in big box stores in some places, but where I live, I’ll probably have to order it (especially if it’s something like Retrofit). It’s not that I have an issue with working with local suppliers (I think it’s good to support local business). It’s that I’m no stranger to needing eight trips to get supplies in a single week, and at least one of them will be 15 minutes before closing. So, whenever I consider working with a brand, I heavily weigh whether or not the “extra effort” is worth it. As cool as a product might be, I certainly don’t want to add to my DIY frustrations by the store being closed while there’s still daylight and I have a deadline to meet, or having something only available if I buy in bulk. Pros have enough experience to create a list they can more easily stick to. But that’s not my life, and I don’t want to pretend it is. And it wouldn’t be honest to advocate that you should make extra efforts that I wouldn’t be willing to make.
As you probably guessed, I had zero problem telling the marketing team exactly this. A homeowner needs more than just the product’s benefits or cost; the experience can still be intimidating and frustrating. And that’s ultimately why I chose to work with them. Because a pro can know all day and night why one product might be better than the other and advocate for it with ease. A brand’s sales team can work their magic to get a product into stores to test sales performance. But if there’s something out there that will solve a DIYers problem and we don’t actually know it exists, we can’t go looking for it or ask the store to start carrying it. This is one of those times where it might legit be worth it, and we’ll see once I install!
The post There’s a Drywall for That? | Touring National Gypsum appeared first on Ugly Duckling House.
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NEW YORK | Women's sports leagues band together with SheIS initiative
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NEW YORK | Women's sports leagues band together with SheIS initiative
NEW YORK (AP) — Women’s sports leagues are banding together with a new initiative, SheIS.
Eight leagues, including the WNBA, U.S. Tennis Association, Women’s Pro Fastpitch League and Canadian Women’s Hockey, will try to help each other increase resources, viewership and attendance.
“Each commissioner has agreed to come to one and another’s events,” WNBA President Lisa Borders told The Associated Press.
“Women have to support women before you ask other people to support you. I’ll buy a ticket to a hockey game in Canada or a fast-pitch softball game.”
All the league commissioners signed a pledge and filmed a public service announcement promoting the effort. Those ads will start rolling out Tuesday.
“It’s a social media campaign for now but will grow,” Borders added. “This is only tier one.”
The initiative was the brainchild of Brenda Andress, commissioner of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, who came up with the idea last November.
“This collective sports voice has never been heard. I wanted to create some type of program or challenge to bring women together that was born out of positivity,” Andress said. “So I thought of SheIS. When I thought of myself, she is a grandmother with young kids. She is a commissioner. She is a hockey player. She is anything she wants to be. That’s where SheIS came from.”
Andress reached out to Borders and USTA chief executive Stacey Allaster, who quickly jumped on board.
“Right off the bat, they were so supportive,” Andress said. “We have to do it together. Let’s do it, but let’s do it right. It’s going to be professional, top notch. It’s about us as females recognizing we can bring the fans not just to hockey, but to the WNBA. Tennis needs more eyes on the TV. It’s not about everyone else making the difference for us, but us making the difference for ourselves.”
There has been much discussion over the years about the wage gap in sports between the sexes. Tennis is one of the few sports where the women have some parity — all four Grand Slam events pay both sexes equally.
“I think the secret sauce for women’s tennis started with our athletes,” Allaster said. “It took their advocacy and courage to stand up to the establishment much like soccer players and female hockey players have. It was Billie Jean King and the ‘Original 9′ saying they’d do this back in the 1970s. The athletes have the power and SheIS is a great time to energize our athletes.”
The SheIS group can point to a Seattle group already using the multisport format. Force 10 Sports Management owns and operates the WNBA’S Seattle Storm. The group also runs the Seattle Reign of the National Women’s Soccer League and the Seawolves of Major League Rugby. There is cross-promotion among the sports.
“Seattle is absolutely the model,” Borders said. “They were doing that before SheIS is born.”
The city has embraced female athletes such as Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe and Breanna Stewart.
Before the launch Tuesday, members of the founding committee, league commissioners and prominent figures from across sports gathered at the WNBA office in New York to sign the SheIS pledge.
“The heroes who run, walk and play among us make up 51 percent of the global population, yet have little to no visibility in the sports world,” said Dr. Jen Welter, who was the first female coach in the NFL.
“SheIS will give the first true platform for these real-world, real-women heroes who have been living among us. With that comes the opportunity to be much more visible and for female athletes and their supporters to join forces in a really positive way. I love that this bubbling movement is coming from the sports industry, because sports has the ability to change the world.”
The other leagues that already joined are Women’s Pro Lacrosse, Canada Basketball, Rugby Canada and the National Women’s Hockey League. Andress expects other sports like soccer, gymnastics, swimming, cycling and running to join soon, too.
Through the initiative, the leagues also aim to help increase young girls’ participation in sports.
“Women for so long have been competitive no matter what they do in life,” WNBA player Chiney Ogwumike said. “We are even more powerful when we are collaborative. In public, we have to support each other.”
The initiative also has support from the WWE. Stephanie McMahon, the chief brand officer of the company, signed the pledge .
“We need to encourage audiences to watch and attend games and live events, and young girls to stay in sports,” she said. “Girls need to see themselves across sports, entertainment and business, and it’s going to take all of us to show the world that SheIS anything she wants to be.”
By DOUG FEINBERG , By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC(R.A)
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