The majority of the rough mudding and sanding I farmed out, but they didn't leave things smooth in dozens of areas and they didn't fill any of the gaps around the venting or the garage doors. We couldn't tell whether things were smooth until the sealer and paint went on, so I ended up finishing the rest myself.  Filling in all the gaps and the finish mudding took another few weeks of my time off between July and October.  Using a 5 gallon bucket of mustard yellow paint I got on sale 5 years ago, a 5 gallon bucket of sealer and 3 gallons of white ceiling paint, Nora and I painted everything ... such a big space, it was like painting 4 regular rooms. Nora did all the wallboard sealing and most of the yellow before coming down with tennis elbow, which would plague her for months:(  It took me another 2 weeks to finish up the painting with 2 coats of yellow and the white ceiling paint required to cover everything and then miles of edging.  I then added the gray vinyl cove base at the floor level and painstakingly painted around the furnace, the venting everywhere and the electrical panel.