Home Addition Update

January 7, 2008. The insulators are supposed to make an appearance this week. We had our walk-through last Thursday with Jason, George and Chip and made all our last minute decisions on placements of receptacles; if the close-up inspection went okay then the insulators will start filling-in walls, floor and ceiling. This is standard home-remodeling practice, before the walls get closed-in all the wiring gets inspected by the county and by the homeowners...Jane and I. For us it's a question of where do we want the light switches, how many outlets and where, and do we want two-way or three-way....light switches of course, not Skyline Chili.
Just as this is about to happen the temperatures have started going back up again...go figure. I'll tell you, it's been chilly in the house the past two weeks with only a thin sheet of plastic between us and the uninsulated, unheated bedroom addition. There has been a veritable tsunami of frigid air flowing into our living spaces and now that the cold temperatures have at least temprarily abated......the insulators are scheduled to come. I'm not complaining, just marking the irony of the situation. Besides it will get colder again and we'll be one step closer to getting the project done. Here's are recent pictures of the outside.

January 8th. When I got home last night the porch decking was about half completed. In order to make the porch as mosquito-free as possible the framing crew first laid down a fiberglass screening material over the floor joists before installing the decking. The porch decking has a nice detail I haven't seen used before, a trim around the perimeter of the deck so that you don't see any exposed ends. Click on the picture to see an expanded view to see the decking detail.

January 9th. Today the porch decking is complete and looks real nice. Here are some pictures from different perspectives. I just figured out this morning that the insulators won't arrive until air-conditioning ducts are navigated to the new bedroom and the copper pipes for the radiators plumbed. The ducts were going in this morning as I was leaving for work. I'm not sure about the radiators. The picture above at left is looking from the bedroom door out to the screened porch. The picture below is from the porch looking toward the bedroom addition. No insulators yet.

January 11th. The framing crew and/or Jason have done a lot of work outside getting ready for the vinyl siding to go on. Our siding has a lot of detail features, a watermark band around the bottom and similar band around the top of the walls that we've received a lot of complements from neighbors about. I don't even want to think about how much we pay for this feature; they require a lot of plywood underlayment to build-up the watermark before the siders come. It's looking good and it'll be worth it when it's completed. No insulators today either.

January 15th. The insulators came and went yesterday! The bedroom is now wrapped (with Tyvek), insulated, caulked, and ready for the next act. That would be the drywall installation. When I talked to Jason this morning he thought that all the sheetrock panels would be in place today (after all we're not getting that much more interior room). I suspect that it will take another couple of days for a couple coats of dry wall compound and a first coat of paint (which shows the drywall defects) and the then the finishing drywall touches. This means the bedroom should be ready for the electrical installations and finishing woodwork by next week. Jane and I really have to move to get the carpet selected for the bedroom so we can arrange for it to be installed without a big time lag after the painters are finished. Below are before and after photos in the bedroom looking toward the back of the house and the baywindow.