Year: 2020

With another week of workers here every day, things have continued to progress. The furring and siding is going up, and is maybe three quarters done. Gutters and downspouts have arrived, with one gutter installed on the North side of the house, which is looking basically done at this point. Inside the house, the plumbers and electrician have gotten a lot more of the rough done, and things are starting to come together.

Last weekend, our nephews Aaron and David came down to help. It was raining on Saturday, so they started working on the installing the rest of the acoustical tape in the second floor while I worked on the attic radiator line pressure testing (unsuccessfully). We noticed some water coming in on the back wall from the attic door. It didn’t look like a flashing problem though, water appeared to be running down the face of the door and then coming underneath it, through the weather stripping. We spent some time re-shimming the door to make it more precisely level, but I may need to work out some additional water protections, maybe a bead of caulk along the front edge of the door sill? I don’t even know.

That Sunday, Aaron and David returned to help with the back porch ledger. The workers had gotten the Blue Skin (house wrap) onto the back, so our first step was to add some ice and water shield. Unfortunately, the temperatures outside were cold enough that the tar-based stuff wouldn’t stick to the house at all. We tacked it up with some cap nails and then I ran over to our storage unit and got the heat gun. With some patience and only a couple slightly melted gloves, we got it all adhered for the first floor, second floor, and attic ledgers.

With that on, the next step was putting up the ledgers. We counter sank holes for all the structural screws and got a few started. Here we discovered that it would have been smarter to mark the location of the studs before we put on the ice and water shield, since we had to find them by feel and then transcribe that to the ledger before we could put it up. We got better at this process as we worked our way up.

We got the last of the ledgers attached, though I was short by two screws. I also noticed I had missed the stud when I attached the blocking for the air conditioner mount. Unfortunately, that screw takes a very large bit that I can’t seem to find anywhere, even though I just had it the previous weekend.

The last few days Sarah started putting in the batted mineral wool insulation in some of the interior wall studs that don’t need any electrical or plumbing. I finally got the return side of the radiators to survive a pressure test. I started work on the solar tube install, put in blocking where we’ll have towel bars in the bathrooms and under a squeaking bit of floor at the top of the stairs, put the doorbell back on now that the front door is trimmed, and moved a pile of stuff that may be in the way of the electrician.

We haven’t started the radiant floor install yet because we’re waiting for the siding installers, plumbers, and electricians to finish clomping around in an effort to prevent damage. We’ll need to put down ram board on top of it regardless, but we still want to minimize potential issues. Hearing the things getting regularly dropped on the subfloor upstairs is reinforcing that this is a good choice. We’re heading into the holidays, and aren’t sure if the workers will be here next week. We put in a smart deadbolt on the front door so that we can unlock automatically if needed. If nothing else, it means I don’t have to be up and dressed before seven every day.

It’s truly incredible how much can happen when a whole crew of people actually show up and work. We’ve seen this from friends and family during demo days, and we saw it when we had the second floor and attic framing done. Now, we’ve seen it with the exterior of the house, and it’s not done yet!

The house has been house-wrapped for quite a while now, and that house wrap has been slowly failing because it’s not meant to be exposed so long. The crew showed up last Thursday and we discussed two options, foam over house wrap, as I had planned, or house wrap over foam, which they were more familiar with.

I’ve come to believe that even when the information I’ve read suggests advantages to one way over another, if both ways work, you go with the one the contractor is familiar with. This is for a few reasons. First, obviously if they’re familiar with it, they’re more likely to do it correctly, quickly, and without unexpected issues. Second, if something goes wrong down the road, they can’t say it’s because you made them do it a different way.

In this case, there’s an additional advantage, which is that it really simplifies the flashing details. The possibility does exist that if water ever did get behind the wrap, the wood is less protected, but it’s both less likely because of the simpler drainage plane, and they’re using Blue Skin instead of traditional house wrap, which is both water tight but vapor permeable, and thus allows drying to the outside. That’s important when you’re using closed cell foam inside, like we are, which may prevent drying to the inside, because trapped water leads to mold and rot.

They also reset the windows, using the clips in the correct way to set the windows to the correct depth for the finished siding and trim. They installed the giant stack of rigid foam and when that ran out, they got some more. Here there was a hiccup, because I noticed a giant stack of pink XPS foam, rather than the polyiso foam I was using. There are a few reasons to use polyiso over XPS. Better insulation value, radiant barrier in the form of the foil face, less damaging to the environment in manufacturing, and most relevant to us, better fire protection.

We’re right on the property line on the North side, and three feet or less to the neighbor’s house. Our neighbors actually had to put exterior drywall over their sheathing for fire protection, but in our case, the polyiso foam acts as a fire barrier, not burning until it’s over 800 degrees.

With the windows reset and the foam installed, they covered everything with the Blue Skin and flashed the windows with tape. I had to scramble with my nephew Aaron over the weekend to get the back porch ledger blocking installed, so they can put the Blue Skin over it and I can put on the ledgers. When we though the house wrap was going on first, that blocking would go after, but with the foam going first, it needed to go on right away. We also got the mounting point for the wall-mounted AC unit bracket prepped. These are just pieces of 2x framing lumber backed by 1/2″ plywood to get flush with the 2″ depth of the foam.

This week, while the exterior was still going strong, both the electrician and the plumber showed up and started getting rough work done. Most of the electrical conduit in the second floor and attic is in at this point. Sarah ordered a porta-John to put in the back, since the GC never got one. I got really frustrated trying to finish up the rough install of the radiator lines in the attic, but I think I’ll have it done in the next few days.

We’ve got more nephew help this weekend and we’re going to try to knock out more of the interior wall sound insulation, both the acoustical tape as well as the batted mineral wool, and possibly start the radiant panel install.

Once the last of the Blue Skin is done, they’re going to start on the furring strips and the actual siding. In another week, the exterior of the house is going to go through yet another transformation. We’re pretty excited, even with all the constant banging and thumping while we work from home in the basement.

Just two short years after we got the original quote, we have our new roof. Last week Wednesday the crew showed up and got to work. It took three days, but the whole thing is done. It was windy all weekend, so I haven’t gotten up on a ladder to see for myself, but we can see the porch and the the bay window peak from inside and they look good. Nothing blew off the roof in the wind, and everything inside stayed dry, so I’m calling that a win. We’ve been emptying a bucket every time it rained ever since I cut the hole in the roof for the kitchen exhaust.

On the downside, the old shingles falling during demo ripped up our house wrap and it was flapping all Saturday night so bad we couldn’t sleep. I got it taped down yesterday after things dried out a bit. We’d really like to get the new house wrap, exterior insulation, and siding, but we’re waiting on the electrician to put in the exterior boxes. He’s in turn waiting on permit, permit is waiting on our architect, who is waiting on the permit expeditor, who is waiting on the architect.

The concrete guy got a dumpster dropped off in the back yard today to clear out some of the debris and get the footings poured. That may be as soon as tomorrow. I just need to make sure he actually puts in the rebar.

I never heard back from the radiant company, so rather than chase them down I went ahead and figured out everything we need in the mechanical room to finish the system and got that on order. It’ll be a bit of a project to reconfigure the system for the additional loops, but I think I’ve worked out everything I need to do it. At this point the only thing left to buy for the entire radiant system is some odds and ends for the radiators in the attic.

The other big activity this weekend was moving the chest freezer into the basement. It’s been on the first floor ever since we moved down here, but we’ve got to get everything cleared out upstairs. Sarah and the kids got everything emptied out into coolers and laundry baskets, then I chipped the ice out, put it on the hand truck, and with Sarah’s help we got it into the basement.

Just like I did for the refrigerator, we put it up on a block of wood (part of the old wood beam that we replaced) so that it can sit on top of the curb against the outside wall. Even with packing our storage unit to the top, our basement shelves are piled high at this point. We’re running out of room everywhere; clearly we have too much stuff. I need to run some more things to storage and hopefully find a spot for it all.

We also got our sample door for our kitchen cabinets. We’re pretty excited about it. The whole world seems to have gone to white, painted, and/or modern kitchens, but we’re sticking with traditional stained cabinets. I’m tempted to switch to a simpler profile and save some money, but I’m pretty sure we’ll wind up going with this.