Foam Home

Just about every wall and ceiling cavity in the house is filled with yellow medium density foam insulation. It feels and squeezes like those water soluble packing peanuts you sometimes get in Amazon.com shipments.

Walking around inside today was an altogether new spatial experience. It was like being muffled under a comforter or having cotton stuffed in your ear canals. Sound died instantly. From the living room we could barely hear the skill saws humming in the driveway, and the back door was wide open. As we stood and stared at (what must be) the NASA technology surrounding us we could vividly imagine the coziness this place will have in winter. We were nearly hallucinating our tiny heating bills.

This photo stitch was shot from the landing between the first and second floors.

• 5/9 :: Daniel adds : That stuff is awesome. The brand new Mayflower Inn Spa filled every single wall in the new building with the stuff, mostly for its sound proofing ability. You are going to have one quiet (and cozy) house. I just wish we'd had the foresight to fill our ceilings with the stuff when we did our original construction, our biggest complaint is our upstairs neighbors clomping around.

Roofing Off

The old 3-tab composite asphalt shingle on the lower roof is off. We found five layers of this stuff, and the recommended maximum is two before you're supposed to strip it all and start over. One layer or a dozen, it doesn't matter for this project because we're installing metal roofing and we need a bare roof on which to mount it. Metal has a much longer life, is lighter, and has better heat reflectivity than asphalt.

Ganging Up

Justin spent well over 24 hours this past weekend working with the rockin' electricians. They ate, drank and slept wiring, and didn't leave until nearly midnight on Sunday. Their time was well spent as they passed inspections with flying colors on the first round.

Here's a great example of what J and the guys from Statewide Electrical put together. You'll notice the switchbox above has room for 5 switches. We're trying to minimize the "wall acne" (a term coined by Susan Susanka in our remodel bible, The Not So Big House) by ganging as many of the switches together as logical. Furthermore, we're trying to order the switches in a sensible manner. This is to decrease the flicking on and off of lights trying to find the correct one. Few things bugged me more with our last house than trying to turn on the outdoor light and instead starting our 90-decibel garbage disposal. Our friend Shawn M. once did it late at night while visiting. I think it nearly killed him.

On a green note. The metal recycling guy stopped by this morning, as he does every Monday. We're usually pretty good about leaving all scraps out for him, but, in the haze that was this weekend, managed to dump some of the wiring. I walked up to the house as he was fishing it out of the dumpster. Though we've never met, I can tell that he's good people. He only takes what's on the street or in the dumpster, and never comes on site. I think he has his regular rounds, and seems to know the construction crew. What a great mutualism.

Foam Prep

The spray foam insulation crew was in today to prep the windows, doors and inside walls with protective plastic and plastic backing. Click on the image for better detail of the first floor, which presently looks like something out of the movie E.T. Here's another photo from a different angle.

We're insulating the interior walls and first floor ceiling as much for energy efficiency as we are for sound proofing. Icynene spray foam has good sound dampening qualities and it can be applied quickly. And since it doesn't have to be cut into polygons like batt insulation, we can fill in all the little nooks and crannies around electrical fixtures, wiring, plumbing, ventilation ducts, windows and doors that would otherwise be escape holes for heat and sound.

• 5/7 :: Mark adds : When I see the shots from the other angle I think Flight of the Navigator, but ET works too . . .

Deck Update!

Okay, maybe not too much to get excited about here, but the remaining stringers are in and the corner stringer is nearly finished. The decking material hasn't arrived yet, but when it does this part of the project will quickly roll forward. In the meantime, we've been finishing up some porch design details, such as identifying which brackets to use. We've also been planning the deck rail post positions and how we want to run the cable guardrail system through them.

As Seen From Above

Taken while hanging out the second floor bedroom window. Just beyond the top edge of the photo is the back yard. Yes, we are obsessed with the deck.

Systems, Revisited

This is the furnace and hot water closet in the basement. All this ductwork and plumbing are new and are attached to the heater and furnace that came with the house (both of which are energy efficient). Compare to the systems photo we took before dismantling the existing ducts and pipes.

Mmm, Decky Decky

More joists and stringers. These stair treads are temporary until the decking material arrives, which should be any day now.

• 5/2 :: Denise adds : Can't wait to hang out on that nice decky decky. Looks like things are coming along. I can't believe you'll (hopefully) be moving in next month. Time flies huh?

• 5/8 :: We add: We're still on target for an early June move-in. It's hard to believe, but Alex, our project manager and scheduling master, says it can be done. We're ready when they are!
  

More Deck

The main deck got a bunch more joists today and got what appears to be the first stringer. It's held in place with a single nail, so it may only be a template. Either way, seeing it hang there gets my mind a step closer (har har) to visualizing the finished house.

We asked Green Hammer about the project time line yesterday and they assure us that we're still on target for a mid- or end-of-May an early June move in. It's hard to believe, but over the next week we're going to see the next phase of major changes hit the house: finished decking, siding, insulation, and sheet rock

After that it's painting and flooring and that's all we'll really need to live in it. By mid-June we'll be finishing the kitchen and tying off the bigger loose ends.

PEX

Today Dean installed the supply plumbing for the main floor bathroom tub. The tub spout will be mounted to the wall (not the tub) and we'll have a hand shower (a shower head and handle mounted to a hose) for rinsing, um, whatever one may feel like rinsing.

The "last inch" of plumbing throughout the house is copper, but the long runs are Wirsbo Aquapex, which is a brand of PEX (high-density polyethylene) supply line tubing. This kind of plumbing is easy to work with because it's flexible and it installs quickly. It's also resistant to damage caused by freezing. The tubing simply expands and then when the ice melts it collapses back to its original shape. That kind of malleability is good for high pressure points, too. Fine Homebuilding did an unofficial test last year and tested a bunch of different PEX configurations under pressure. Their tests consistently pumped about 900 PSI into the tubes before they burst. Considering water comes in from the street between 40 and 80 PSI (ours measures at 65 PSI), there's a lot of headroom before it'll blow.

Plastic plumbing got a bad rap in the 60s and 70s due to faulty materials and joint leak problems. It's taken a long time for its reputation to recover, and some plumbers still refuse to use it. Just like with copper plumbing, it's important to make sure the joints are good. When the city inspectors come through, they'll apply high pressure to the supply lines and do a gravity leak test on the drains before they pass the installation.

Deck Framing

Today the crew completed the main deck and front porch beam layout and started filling in with joists.

Sun Dial

The crew hones its record keeping skills over lunch.

Hot, Cold and Primer Lines

Hookups for the hot and cold lines for the kitchen sink are in. The feed on the right is the primer line for the bathroom floor drain, which is about ten feet away. Floor drains require primer lines which periodically wash the drain out and help avoid sewer gas buildup. The primer line is here instead of the bathroom because of space issues.

Floor Fixtures

The floor fitting for the toilet (right) and the floor drain (left) are installed in the bathroom. The tiles will slope slightly toward the drain, which will catch overspray from the tub's hand shower.

Married Life as Opera Bouffe

A couple of weeks ago Michael and Jeff opened one of the kitchen walls and pulled out a section of The Weekly Oregonian, dated Thursday, December 29, 1904. We finally got around to browsing through the fragile pages, which crumble at a touch, and took a few snapshots. The snippets of articles, ads and stock analyses are a wild lens onto the year Justin's great grandmother was born.

Here's a sampling, taken from the above photo:

Married Life as Opera Bouffe
CHICAGO, Dec 5.--Degradation of the marriage tie, as illustrated in the life of Mrs. Grace Snell Layman, who has just been granted her fifth divorce, was denounced by judges today.
"This woman's career has been a rank travesty on marriage and the sacredness of its obligations," said Judge Brentano.
"Mrs. Snell, or Layman, or whatever her last name is at present, has turned the married life into opera bouffe," said Judge Mack.
Mrs. Layman was married first when she was 16 to Frank Coffin, a dancing master. She got a divorce from him and married him a second time. Again she got a divorce from him and again married him.
Mrs. Layman is under 40 and still pretty. She is said to be comtemplating a sixth marriage.

We put together a slide show of dozen or so clippings that feature ads for Chinese Herbs and male dysfunction remedies, and blurbs about criminal youth, the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and an attempted rat-poison-and-beer suicide, all of which you can view by clicking here.