Siding Color Reveal

We finally made a siding choice. 

 Although we liked farmhouse-y white, we didn't want white because it would "stick out" too much and we were already prominent on top of the hill.  Red would make us look like a barn. I liked a creamy yellow but my husband didn't. The HOA rules were to choose a house color that would blend in with the surroundings; a lot of the neighborhood has opted for browns, greens, blues or beige. We didn't care for green or brown. Blues are too hard to get right and tend to fade fast around here. My husband works with a lot of beige all day in his profession, and we both agreed: NO BEIGE.

Our last option seemed to be gray, but we could not agree about the shade: one preferred light dove gray and one preferred dark grey. 

One day my husband called on his work break: we had to make the siding color decision because the order had to go in that day! We had to decide about gray! But in half an hour we had changed our minds.

We went with a color called "sailcloth."

Which is basically beige. 

The truck delivered the siding on a gray rainy day. 

We aced the "blending into the surroundings" bit!

I was sure that we had been subliminally influenced by the dirt. 

As with all major decisions, we were worried we had made the wrong one. When we saw it in person we were all rather disappointed. One of our kids said it reminded him of an "Airplane hangar metal building."  I renamed it "vanilla pudding" to make myself feel better. 

The funny thing is-- that once it was off the ground (reflecting the blue sky) and on the house (in shadow), it changed to a pretty creamy light yellow...just the color I wanted!

A little random today

A little bit of contrast for you....

The boys were getting faster at moving scaffolding, taking it down, or putting it up

When you build a house with your family, you will find many, many, things that you disagree with each other about. Large things, small things, design things... we were warned by others that it could be hard on us to build a house together.

 I'm so glad we have the same taste in side-door-stoop roofs though. 

Isn't it pretty??. 

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."