We Couldn't Resist . . .

The spray foam contractor apparently left us a new toy. As we were trying to get the house cleared out and ready for drywall tomorrow, I squeezed this 6-foot tall, 4-foot diameter cotton bag of foam shavings out of the kitchen door (We're talking one HUGE bean bag). Once it landed, I knew I was in trouble. The pictures speak for themselves - we got little done the rest of the day. . .



 

 

Finished Foam

Here's a few more pics of the finished spray foam. We had our Thermal Bypass Test for the Energy Star rater and it went well. She pointed out a few things that we had already seen and already planned on doing, so we are good to go. The last test that the Energy Star people will do (HERS Rater) is the final inspection with the Blower Door Test and the ductwork test. Those are done when the house is finished. The solar hot water heater contractor is coming on Tuesday to begin his work for installing the solar hot water heater and panels. Drywall will begin on Tuesday as well.


 

Almost finished . . .

The Pure Seal guys decided to spend the night in Cincinnati after all and finish up our job today. I just left there and took these photos as they were finishing up the spraying. The second floor is totally done - including caulking and clean up. They had just a few more spots on the first floor to spray and then they'll shave it smooth with the studs, caulk, and clean up. Our Energy Star Thermal Bypass Test is Sunday, and drywall begins Tuesday!

Above and below, views from the loft.

Above - Kaila's bedroom. Below - Dining room.

 

A Close Up

 

Holy Cow, It's a Marathon!

Today has been a crazy day. First, the inspector arrived to do our follow-up inspection. As you can see from the blue tag below, we passed! We are ready for drywall.

Just as the inspector was leaving, the spray foam insulation contractor arrived. (These pics are out of order, as usual). Below is the spray foam being applied to the stair wall.

Here's a few of the loft being sprayed.

A plug for them . . .

The spray foam guys (Pure Seal) arrived from Cleveland at about 1:00 pm today. After some time for maneuvering the driveway and setting up, they began taping off and spraying. They estimated two days for the job, but we just went up to the house to check on them and they told Kenny that they were trying very hard to finish up tonight. It's about 5:20 pm now and they were finished with the second floor, but still had the main floor and some high parts of the stair wall and great room to do. I'll be quite impressed if they finish tonight, but hey, they're young so who knows? Kenny's there supervising, of course :)

The drywall guy called and said he'll start on Tuesday. We're going to focus our efforts outside on garage siding this weekend as long as the weather is tolerable.  

More Pink

 

Seeing Pink (and RED)

The good news is that we have been making progress on the firestopping that is required per out rough-in inspection. We have to use fire caulk and rock wool to fill any holes or gaps between floors in the chase and anywhere in the top plates of interior walls. This prohibits the spread of fire from one floor to another. Although my continuing question is what's the point, since we have an open, two story great room?? Oh well, what the inspector wants, the inspector gets. . . Note the pink fire caulk and the beige rock wool in the pic below. Also notice the pink protective floor covering on the wall - how cute, it coordinates with the fire caulk.



Spray foam is supposed to begin being installed tomorrow or Thursday, but we still have a missing jamb extension on one of our windows. We ordered one on Dec. 6th and it just got here today. The problem is that it looks terrible and doesn't match the existing jamb. The other factory jamb extensions in the house are so tight and match so beautifully that you don't even notice that there's extensions there. (We have 2x6 walls, so that's why there's extensions). They are now supposed to be coming out tomorrow to try and do a custom extension to make it match better. We'll see how that goes, but we've decided that if it doesn't match the quality of the other windows in the house, the manufacturer will have to replace that one window and send us one with a factory jamb extension per our original order. They seemed to think we were being unreasonable . . . I just don't see how I can stomach paying that much for windows and not getting it right? I don't think that's too much to ask. I'll keep you posted as this saga continues! 

Just a Few More

Getting ready for spray foam - we're all cleaned up and covered! (The insulation contractor tapes off the windows and outlet boxes himself - we just did the floor and exposed trusses).

The tub is set!

 

A Few More

Here's a few more of the interior as we prep for the insulation applicator. Enjoy!

 

Siding and Insultation Prep

Here's a few pictures of the exterior siding now that the first course is finished around the entire house. The top picture is the east end of the house and the second one is the master bedroom window.


Below is the south side with the first course of siding on. If you look closely, you can see where Kenny has cut the siding and installed the exterior outlet box near the front door. There will also be a hose bib in that location as well. The spray foam installer couldn't make it this week, so he will be applying the insulation on Wednesday this coming week. The picture below is of the interior of the house as we prepare for insulation. We've taped off and covered the floor in the areas that receive insulation.
 

Weekend Work Update

This weekend we worked on siding. As I've written before, spray foam insulation is going to be applied soon to all of the exterior walls, so we needed to get the first course of siding on so that we could cut in the exterior outlet boxes and hose bibs. So here are a few pics to document this warm January weekend. This first one shows the siding detail at the window.




One of the siding pieces we put on Saturday was 19' long and went around several of our windows. Needless to say, we expected that getting it on was going to be a challenge, so we called in some reinforcements. Here you can see a co-worker of Kenny's, Melinda, and her husband Jim. Daughters Caitlin and Kayleigh were on babysitting duty while the adults maneuvered the siding into place.