Plasterers Get To Work

The day after the drywall was installed the plasterers got to work. They first taped the sheets together and then began the process of feathering out the plaster across the seams. This gradual process of building up layers of plaster will take about a week to complete.

Drywall is up

I thought this day would never come! After more than nine months of work the end is finally in sight. A crew of 4 drywallers installed 4' x 12' (5/8" thick) drywall throughout the first floor of my house. It took the crew about 9 hours to finish the work and they made it look so easy; each of the sheets of drywall easily weighed more than any single one of installers.

Insulating the House

We're about a week before sheetrock goes up and the builders have started to fill the walls with R-13 fiberglass insulation. The exterior walls will need to layers of this insulation because they are now almost twice as thick as they used to be to account for the additional thickness of the new concrete sills the house is now bolted onto. This insulation should make a huge difference to the ambient temperature in the house (it has always been cold, in part because it's north facing, but also given the fact that the house has never been insulated before).

New Siding Is Up

The carpenters finished installing the rear siding on the back of the house. When the rear deck was removed several months back the siding on the rear of the house was in such bad condition that we decided to reside the back of the house at no minor expense. Although the siding was purchased "off the rack" the angle of the slope on the new siding didn't match that of the existing siding of the house. The carpenters had to order a custom router bit and re-ripped the sloped side on each of the new boards. These boards were then touched up with primer on all four sides as necessary and allowed to dry before being installed. In the picture, you can also see our new Anderson outswing french doors that were installed; these doors are vinyl clad on the exterior for low maintenance and real wood on the inside. Very nice indeed.

Painting The House

Our whitewashed house appears not to have been painted in quite some time. The paint (particularly on the southern exposure -- the rear of the house) was peeling badly. To complicate matters the house had been painted (badly) quite a number of times and the paint was thick, obscuring a lot of the original ornate detail of the house. The painters erected scafolding around the house and for the past 3 weeks stripped pratically the entire rear exposure which was all flat siding with not much detail and have started stripping the detail on the eastern side of the house. Most of the detail is on the front (north) of the house and this will take the bulk of their time to strip. Plastic sheets have been wrapped around the scafold and on the ground around the house to contain the lead paint and to facilitate clean-up.