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.

Productive Evening

We had quite a productive evening tonight. So much so, in fact, that I didn't even have time to take pictures. I guess that will have to wait until tomorrow. For today, just enjoy this picture from yesterday - it's the tree we moved and hope that it lived. I guess we'll find out this spring!

Siding: Just to give you some background - the siding for the house is in sheets that are 3 feet tall and various lengths from 10' to 23' long. We (and our distributor) mapped out which pieces go where on the house, so everything is preplanned for the most part. We just look at the drawings and we know what length of siding comes next. The bad part is how the siding was shipped to us. We were assuming that the siding would come seperated by area on the house - for example all of the siding for the south side would be packed together. Nope. The siding for the WHOLE house came stacked in one large stack from longest sheet on the bottom, to shortest on top. So that means that each time we need a new piece, it takes at least two people to spend time sorting through the stack to get to the sheet we need. So now that you have the info, it will make sense to you that Kenny and I spent some time sorting through the stack and lining up our next few pieces for the first course of the south side. Once we found the pieces, Kenny took some measurements off the house and we cut the piece. It was quite instricate considering the piece was 13' long and spanned a few windows. Once we had that piece cut, we sorted out to the next piece (19') and got it ready to go on next.

Then we installed j-channel trim around all of the large windows on the south side. I measured and cut the trim while Kenny nailed it up around the windows. With the j-channel on and the piece cut, we are just a few steps away from installing it tomorrow. The details around the windows look really nice and clean.

On a funny note, here's some words of wisdom out of the mouths of babes. As many of you know, we are living in a rental home while we work on our new house. We were getting ready to go to work on the house this afternoon and the kids asked where we were going. I said, "We're going up to the house." Then my two year old son asked, "Daddy's house?" Wow. I guess Kennny has really been working on the house a lot!

I'll try to post some more pictures in the next few days!

Siding Security

Today the security company sent their installer who then wired the house for the security system. Kenny, Pete, and I worked on getting the first two courses of siding up on the west end of the house. See some siding pics below! Aside from some muddy fingerprints, I think it looks pretty good!

Above is me on the ladder and below are a few of Kenny working on the siding too.

All the pics above are the west side, while those below show a few views of the south side.


After we got a few pieces of siding up today, Pete, the kids, and I left and Kenny was also able to cut holes in the siding where the outdoor outlets will be.