Fast Forward

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.