One of the great things about Google and YouTube is the quick access to a vast amount of resources. However, one of the major challenges is the overabundance of resources and trying to find the right one. In the case of my project, there is a plethora of resources for home renovations and specifically for installing drywall. The problem with this is that it's hard to determine which one will be most useful for me in preparing to complete this next step in my project. When searching the term on google "How to Install Drywall," it produces approximately 41,000,000 results. The interesting thing is that I, like most people, will not move past the first page of results. From what I understand about the Google search mechanism, many of the results are streamlined and the most appropriate ones seem to show up on the first page, but I also know that results can be influenced by advertisements. This factor in and of itself makes it difficult to determine which resource is truly the best for me to use so I began to do some preliminary work to navigate through some of the key resources.
One of the obvious things that I noticed right away was that the value of YouTube is much more practical than the step by step written guides with pictures. Although some of these resources were helpful in getting started - knowing what materials, tools, etc. that I need - they aren't super helpful for someone who has no experience with home renovations. The value of seeing somebody begin a project and go through the steps on video is much more valuable than reading about it. The other benefit of YouTube videos is that you can pause, rewind, or skip forward if certain aspects of the video need to be rewatched or don't pertain to you. Simply put , YouTube is a blessing for DIY projects because pretty much anything you've ever thought of doing before has been done and posted to a video on YouTube. I have attached some links to some of the resources I have begun to look through. Unfortunately, many of these videos have privacy settings and therefore the videos couldn't be embedded in my post, so you will have to click on each button to be taken to a new tab.
These first two links are for Lowe's and Home Depot's videos regarding how to hang drywall. The benefit of these videos is that you know they are likely reliable - two major companies describing how to do a simple project that is foundational to their existence. However, the major issue in each of these videos is that they are very brief. Any video less than 10 minutes is clearly not going to provide the detail that I feel I need to begin a project that I have zero background knowledge in.
The following two links are much more useful in terms of their length, but also after briefly reading through the comments, it's clear that both have provided value to others in a similar situation to myself. This reflection is an important one, the sense of online community is an important aspect to online learning. Sometimes it feels like even in an online class where people are expected to be on Zoom, there is almost no connection or sense of community established. However, there seems to be a sense of community that is often established among people that are seeking to develop new skills and pursuing goals. By reading through the comments on the videos listed below, people often are appreciative of the support that these videos provide and often other commentators are providing ongoing encouragement and positive feedback. There is maybe a sense of community that is established in facing the struggle of developing a new skill and realizing how helpful it is to have other people to lean on and support. In terms of the videos below, I am planning to primarily use the Home Renovision DIY page as Jeff (the renovator extraordinaire) provides extensive, detailed videos for the entire drywall process!
My ongoing plan involves beginning to install the physical drywall in the coming weeks. I am waiting for some tools to borrow from my older brother, who himself is quite handy, and will begin to install the drywall once I am fully equipped. Over this time, I plan to carefully construct a plan and utilize the videos which I have linked to make sure that I am knowledgeable and confident in how to get started and successfully complete the next steps in this process!