Well, a bit frustrating, but the drywall is actually "in" the house, it's just sitting in piles in different rooms. There were two truckloads of it, and they unloaded them by hand. They are doubled up 4x12 in size, and weight 180 pounds each, so these guys hand carry these off the side of the truck BY THEMSELVES. The sheetrock for the garage is firewall rated, so 5/8 inch thick, and they weighed 240 each. Now, I seriously respect the working class man in every way, but my kids will go to college or trade school and I will hold their hand to and from every day if I have to...
My drywall contractor ran into a hitch at his last job so we are waiting for that crew to be able to move on... From what I understand, the process will take about a week to hang, tape, float, and texture once they are on site. From that point, we have our trim guy who will move in with all the equipment to make everything... cabinets, trim, stereo cabinets, closet systems, mount and trim doors, baseboards, you name it... I pondered posting pictures of his work, but it is from another house and wouldn't be fair to put those pictures out with respect to other's privacy... You'll have to wait and hope ours turn out well..
Here is me. Why on earth I chose to post this picture is beyond me, but it proves how hot it's been. This was on insulation day. It has been just over 100 degrees for over a week now, and will continue that way for a perhaps another week. I think next Saturday the forecast is only 98 degrees... With the extreme humidity, I have found it doesn't matter what time of day you work, because when the temps drop down in the upper 80's at night, the relative humidity climbs much higher, and if you are doing anything more than sitting, you are sweating. It's gross. I rotate shirts out by drying them in the sun, 3 to 5 per day depending on how bad I want to smell. I will burn these shirts at the end of this project...
The house is cooler, however, after the insulation. But very limited windows now don't allow much air through.
Kind of a distant picture, but the round breakfast area where they sprayed the foam, and then "scarfed" it off smooth so the drywall fits cleanly.
Another shot in the attic. I have found some places while waiting around I didn't think were sealed good enough, so I have been caulking some wood-wood transitions and adding can foam if in doubt.
After the foam guys left, I had the plumbers back to tidy up a few items, and pressure test the gas lines. Then, the HVAC guys came back to inspect things and tidy up a punch list of rough in items, including moving a few ducts around.
I also had my own punch list, a list of about 35 items that we had to get done before drywall. Some of these were minor, like run a couple HDMI cables, etc, but others were major... Insulate the garage with fiberglass, insulate between my sons room and a hallway, insulate between the Master and Study. Fiberglass insulation is nasty to work with, and it's a joke in terms of it's air seal qualities. I could be as careful as I wanted and never get close to a foam job. In retrospect, I wish I had hung some drywall on the inside walls and just foamed those walls for sound. The insulation does help with noise I think, though...
Oh, another job that seems minor, but took a lot of time, is that we took digital photos of every wall and most ceilings, and then took video of everything as well. We filled up 16 gigs of flash cards in no time.
Another foam shot... I'll have to snap a few of our fiberglass insulation job... Oh, since I have some extra time now, I have been looking for places to get rid of some extra fiberglass...Stuffing anything questionable. I think I may take a few hours tomorrow and, even though the windows are sealed with low expansion foam, I have room to stuff some fiberglass around all the frames, so I think I will.
Today I also used some high temperature caulk (mortar??) and filled the transition in the main fireplace flue pipe where it penetrates the chase. That makes that pretty much air tight but keeps the combustibles 2 inches away, so it's the best way I could legally address that potential air leak (which is kind of futile since the fireplace flue is basically a 12 inch hole to the sky.
Robert, the foam guy, showing off his skills on this wall. This is over straight OSB, and it is 8 inches thick foam, and not a ripple in it... Wow...
When our kids were little, they watched Teletubbies... Yes, it was painful, but anyway, they had the sucker thing on there called the Nu Nu... Well, this one had about a 12 horse engine on it. After they scarfed the foam, they sucked it up with this thing, and it all flew into a giant cloth bag.
Yes, the pictures are out of order, but I was talking about the chimney chase. This isn't where I caulked, but instead on the top where the chimney pipe will stick out the chimney chase and into the chase cap. I was up there with a roofing guy and we were measuring to fit this area with a stainless steel flashing, which will be made in two pieces and then soldered in place.
Also found out I need to get all the outside corbels and wood braces in place before they stucco/stone. Either I need to buy a band saw and get to cutting (no) or my trim guy said he could handle this task and install for a fair price... (yes).
In the meanwhile, I actually had two, yes, 2 nights in a row where I actually went out with my family for dinner, last night I scarfed down some great Mexican food and a whole herd of chips and salsa... yum. Tonight we went to see a kids movie in 3D. Wife even took the day off and headed out with friends for a change. She was really happy because she had ordered a custom vanity cabinet for the powder room that has a copper top on it with an integrated copper sink. It came, but I will have the furniture store hang onto it for a while, because I have no place for it...
Have a great weekend...
