Work ongoing

I was dead tired yesterday afternoon so I laid down on the front step for a minute or two. This was the view and the color of the sky blew me away

Joe, working on the half wall separating the master bedroom from the guest room

Mac rolling the driveway as his final act

The view from up the driveway with grading complete

Today Mac finished up his work grading and resurfacing the driveway. We've enjoyed having him here but are glad to have the machine out of the way.

Joe completed priming throughout the whole house and moved on to a little left over framing/sheetrocking project that I had been indecisive about, namely the half-wall that defines the master bedroom, such as it is. There was a simple framed wall in place and today I made a couple of decisions that allowed us to finish it off. It will serve as a headboard for our bed eventually, so there are electrical outlets, a phone jack, and a light switch mounted to turn on and off the over-bed light.

Nancy and I have been working on making some rudimentary decisions about the kitchen and what we should have where in the cabinetry. My job is to start working this into a build-able plan, which I will start soon.

Sheetrock Update

Joe and I have been concentrating all our efforts on getting the siding up, but while we've been busy there has been a crew of three guys, Duane, Larry and John, who have been working hard at completing the sheetrock work in the house. They finished yesterday with a final sanding.

We've really left the house to them over the last couple of weeks, so in that respect their work has happened a little off of my radar, but day-by-day there has been a steady sense of shape and clarity to the walls and corners and such throughout the house. With the sanding work done there is this sense of the walls and ceilings as great expanses of flat, clear area. For the first time its occurring to me that with our crisp corners and neatly completed walls we have to be careful in a new way. We can't just throw a screw in the wall to hang something, or bump a long piece of wood on a corner as we carry it inside.

I guess this is a sign that we're getting somewhere.

Going up...

The second floor with sheetrock complete

We continued our clapboard work today, making good headway up the gable-end north wall. Our goal is to finish this wall by the end of the week. We'll see...

Meanwhile the sheetrocking crew has completed the sheetrock hanging phase of their work. Today they began taping joints and installing corner bead and will be continuing this work. Its been a rapid transformation and the house feels, sounds, and looks quite different then it did a week or so ago.

Weekend Clapboard Clatch

This morning witnessed Nancy's parents Lee and Lou, my mom Maime, as well as Nancy and myself all painting clapboards. Out goal was to finish off the remaining bundles from the first of the two pallet loads we have to paint before we're done.

Everybody chipped in and we had four painting stations going with Lou going around keeping us all supplied with unpainted clapboards and full paint trays, as well as touching up any drips or unpainted spots among our completed boards in the racks. It was a fun way to make a lot of headway on a seemingly endless job. If out count is right, we are over the halfway mark and will continue to chip away at the project as we can.

A slightly reduced sheetrock crew also was here today to put in a little weekend time. At this point they are done sheathing the downstairs and will head upstairs tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow -- a Sunday.

We're not going to stop 'em.

Sheetrockers Rock

The sheetrocking work continued yesterday and the first floor is nearly sheathed. The once skeletal framing is taking shape and starting to define the spaces, such as they are, of the living space on the first floor. This is most apparent in the mudroom entry and the office/guestroom in the back corner.

The sheetrock crew is planning to come back today for some more work and expect to finish off the first floor.

Meanwhile, Lee and Lou continued to crank out the painted clapboards all day yesterday. At this point we are nearly half way through all the boards we need to paint. I spent some time yesterday building more saw horses to facilitate additional painting stations.

Big Day

The blower-door testing apparatus in place in the west door

Bill running the test

The readings

Sheetrock being lifted by the boom truck into the second floor

The first afternoon's work by the sheetrock crew

Lee and Lou hard at work painting clapboards

The wooden drip-edge detail

Today was exciting on a number of fronts.

The sheetrock crew arrived and got to work, making quick work of getting the first sheets up after spending a few hours loading. Its clear they are good at what they do and its feeling like the right decision to have hired this job out. They'll be back tomorrow and Saturday and expect to have all the 'rock up in about three days.

Even more notable was the results of our blower-door test performed by Bill Hulstrunk. Everything was buttoned up that I could think of and Bill gave the house a go.

The results were excellent. In fact Bill said that this was the tightest house he has ever seen and says he's tested thousands of houses. Its hard to rate the performance other than the numbers: from what I understand, an average house about the size of our house would come in at approximately 2000 cfm at 50 pascals. Ours hit 240 cfm at 50 pascals. For the record, his machine couldn't actually measure as low as the number that the machine was trying to register, alternating between "lo" and various numbers in the neighborhood of 230-240. This is as good as could have ever hoped and I feel deeply satisfied to have reached this milestone.

Toiling away out of the limelight, and trying to stay in the shade of the house were Lee and Lou, Nancy's parents, who are up visiting us and doing some great work painting clapboards. Way to go Lee and Lou!

In other news, Joe and I installed the wooden drip edge yesterday. This is a piece of molding that sits on top of the water table. Its a detail that matches the molding at the top of the window frames and ties the whole look of the exterior neatly.

Sheetrock's Eve

Our to-do list

Rolling the cellulose flat

We pretty much finished up doing all the work needed before the sheetrockers come in and start hanging. If all goes well, that work will start on Thursday. That gives us tomorrow to button up the last bits and move back to the siding and trim work.

One of the little projects we've been working on is rolling the insulated walls with a rolling-pin like tool mounted on the end of an aluminum post. We are doing this because the cellulose pushes out a bit on the Insulweb retaining fabric and the resulting bulge could make it hard to get the sheetrock to sit flat on the studs. The rolling essentially compresses the cellulose a bit and leaves the wall pretty much flat. Joe, Nancy and I have each been taking turns over the last few days and we are nearly done, with only the upper area of the second floor ceiling left to do.

With one or two exceptions we've emptied the first and second floors, clearing way so that nothing hinders the sheetrock going up.

Trim work

Adam and I finished off the week continuing to put up the window frames. These, along with the corner boards and water table already in place are starting to really bring the look of the exterior into focus. I find the house catching my eye and it feels good. If anything I think I'm a little surprised because its starting to look like a nice place, which is great but not what my sense of purpose has been around this thing, but I guess that's what happens when you decide you don't want to just do run-of-the-mill easy details. In other words, the desire to put thought, quality and effort into the overall appearance of the house is starting to add up to something that has some character and distinction.

Joe will be back this week and he and I will be getting everything ready for the sheetrockers to come in towards the end of the week. We could do the sheetrock work, and for a long while we were planning on doing it, but in the end we decided that the expense would easily justify the quality job that we'd get by hiring it out, while allowing Joe and I to make headway on the exterior. Once he and I have everything good for the sheetrock work, we'll be back at the outside work.

In addition to the sheetrock crew we're gonna have a couple of special guest helpers showing up later in the week. Stay tuned...

Installing boxes

Today involved installing electrical boxes where I'd located the marks throughout the house. These are the housing for the outlets, switches and lights that will eventually inhabit them.

The boxes that are mounted on an exterior wall come with a rubber flange that helps to seal the connection between the electrical box and the sheetrock that will eventually be installed around it. This is an infamous point of entry for air infiltration and I think I might still try to get a little caulking in around this connection if it doesn't seem like its going to snug up.

The blue boxes are located within the house, so do not require the rubber flange.

Whats becoming apparent is that we need to make decisions about things that we haven't dealt with yet, such as what fixture do we want to have in the bathroom over the mirror? There's a million details like this and its a little overwhelming. Any eager interior designers out there?

Slightly off topic: I figured out today that by placing my stainless steel coffee cup on the woodstove I could reheat or keep my coffee warm. Also had a brief and friendly visit from two women who wanted to introduce me to the lord. I let them know that I'd already made his acquaintance in my own way and so no introduction was needed.