Outlasting the House Wrap

 When a project takes a long time to complete, you may find that it becomes an advantage to you in some ways. 

Take our house build, for example. It took us so long that we were able to take advantage of new technologies on the market. Our typical wavy white "Tyvek" style housewrap was getting faded and warn (it's not really supposed to be exposed for more than 6 months). Before we could put the InSoFast insulation up, we needed to replace some of the housewrap. Turns out that there was better housewrap to be had, so we upgraded! 

We put "HydroGap" housewrap on instead of the white stuff. It has little blue rubbery things on it, to provide a bit of a gap between it and whatever is nailed on top of it. I am still sweeping those little blue rubbery things up... 

With the new insulation, it was also time for a new tool. Meet the table saw. It is a really good one, too: it folds up and wheels out of the way. Those are good features to have in a table saw it turns out, for when it is parked in the living room after you have moved in, you can get it out of the way in a few motions. 

While the boys tore the old housewrap down and put the new up, we girls went off to a tea party!

A very elegant tea for a Ladies' Day.

I am sad to say that I do not recall the heartfelt keynote speech given at the party, all I remember was that the speaker handed out bullets as an illustration. Yup, bullets. Between bullets at a tea party and the cows on the road, I knew we had really landed in the Wild West. 

It was always fun to come home and see progress!

You wrapped your house in coffee cups?

 Here are multiple ways to keep a baby happy while everyone else is busy. I can tell you none of these items works for babysitting for more than ten minutes:

It's a photo that would horrify any contractor... items you do NOT want to ever see at the jobsite. Rest assured we were always out of the way, and the construction moved to the outside of the house for a while.

We not only wanted insulation on the inside of the house, we wanted a layer on the outside. 

The local building inspector thought this was a good idea; he used to live in Idaho and said they often built with even more insulation there. I wondered if we were traumatized by living through the winters in an RV?

 Anyway the exterior insulation arrived one day in big cardboard boxes. Upon arrival, we were supposed to inspect them for damage before the driver left. I was very embarrassed that we had no place to unload there but right there, and just wanted those boxes off the street!

And of course there was damage, because these things are basically foam. 

We ordered a type of rigid insulation that was not only affordable but combined a number of elements into one piece. We could also nail siding to it. It's still a little complicated to me, but essentially this stuff screws to the exterior wall, and then the siding nails into the plastic studs on it. Then the siding isn't directly being attached to your wall, and rain can't seep in through any of the siding nail holes to the wall. it's an extra barrier between the siding and the wall. Hope that makes sense. 

Yet another photo documenting a haul up the "driveway."

Ceiling and Boiler

 [ I can't seem to get a post up more than once or twice a month! My apologies. I am trying to figure out the best time of the week to sit and coordinate all the information from this photo account and that photo account... and at this point I am getting mighty mixed up between the photo accounts, the album in the photo editor app, and the posts I've already put up...hopefully I won't put up a repeat! I thank you for your patience!]

To continue from one of the last posts... the ceiling upstairs was getting brighter all the time. 

It really changed things! And yes those are Sunday clothes the boys are wearing... every Sunday after church there was a chance to do something on the house before heading back to town for the evening service. 

Some random photo of the RV wiring... just another day of RV living. I think the was trying to figure out why the radio quit. I'm not sure we ever found out what was wrong with it. 

This neat and tidy bit of complication was the work of someone else... we hired this one out! Getting the boiler in and the "zones" and such for the in-floor heating was something we decided not to DIY. You can find plenty of it on YouTube should you wish to DIY it. 

We chose in-floor radiant heat because it was recommended for the type of winter we get here. When it gets too cold out, heat pumps can't keep up. And, after living in RV's all that time, our feet were cold. Seemed like a good decision at the time! We have had our regrets about using this as our main heat source however. I will probably be saying more about that in time to come.