building for our future

Thanksgiving day this year...22 November 2007...is an extra special day as it’s also the two year anniversary of our girls’s adoption from Russia. I wrote a bit about this in our other BLOG today.

Today is also a good day to update with a few exterior pictures. It was wet and rainy when I was taking the last set, so these had to wait until it was raining only a little bit. :-) At any rate, you can see that things are falling into place quite nicely. We are extremely pleased with our color choices as they will help this structure melt into the property very nicely...it’s big and some color choices might have made it stick out a bit too much. The siding color is called TimberBark and the windows and trim are something akin to a light taupe. (Pella’s “putty” if we had chosen their products; but those windows are from Weathershield) The doors and standing seam roofing over the porches will be a dark bronze as will the exterior lighting fixtures. (Please note that the window trim in some of these photos is still primed white. The third photo provides an example of what the final colors look like)

Yesterday, the gas company was out to replace the meter so it is more suitable to our new needs. Unfortunately, the technician discovered that the folks putting on the siding hit one of the lines going to the second floor of the addition with a nail, so the HVAC folks will need to be out tomorrow to rectify that before the insulators are back on Monday. Nothing like a little more “gas powered” excitement around here!

Last week, I was in the UK on business and was pleased to come home to a lot more siding installed, a passed electrical inspection, a passed rough sprinkler inspection and a few other nice things that got done. Michael had also informed me that he had scheduled the framing inspection for Monday morning (yesterday). Both of us had major trepidation that a visit from our “friend” Frank the inspector would be a major bummer. Much to our mutual surprise, we met Steve...the new inspector. What a remarkable difference. The walk-through was a pleasure and outside of two very small and easily rectifiable items having to do with plate perforations, we are good to go. He’ll give us our framing sign-off when he returns for the insulation inspection next week after he sees that we have made the minor adjustments he requested. Wow! What a remarkable difference! (But I already said that once...)

Today, the insulators got started on the spray-foam. They already had installed the baffles for air flow control under the roof deck, so it was time to spray-away. And they did. By the end of the day as I write this, they have the entire roof done as well as the gables and have tackled most of the second floor walls, too. This is a great product. It provides very high insulation values...R7 to the inch, a total and complete vapor barrier envelope, has both fire and mold resistance and adds significant structural stiffness. I’ve sometimes joked that one could park a truck on top of this addition due to the overbuild, but now I guess it moves to two trucks. :-) At any rate, the insulators will be back early next week to finish the work (as long as hunting season doesn’t, umm...distract them...as it does for many of the trades it seems) and we can then move on to drywall. Once that work is accomplished, the framers and carpenters can effect the connections to the original structure after the HVAC system is able to be fired up.

Here are some pictures from today’s insulation work:

Ok...I’ve been a bit remiss in posting over the last two weeks. Life has been busy. The good news is that things are moving along “noticeably”. While the last of the electrical work is going on inside, the porch was built earlier this past week and the siding is now in full progress.

Regarding the porch...having that go up was a defining moment for the project as it’s the most notable exterior feature outside of the new structure, itself. In addition to the obvious functions it will play in our lives as well as providing an inviting entry to our home, the porch really helps to tie the original structure with the new and helps to eliminate the “seam” between them. The same is true for all the excellent trim work that Jim and Keith have been laboring on for some time now. At the completion of this project, it should not feel like yet another an addition was added to the home; rather, it will be much more like a single entity that fits into the landscape of our property like it’s been there for a long time.

We should have our electrical inspection sometime next week and will also be shooting for our final framing inspection in the same time period, assuming we get our “as-built” plans from the architect. (He recently had back surgery and it still getting caught up) Once that is done, the closed cell spray-foam insulation will be installed, followed by drywall. And then we can move on to opening up the new structure to the existing great room...something we didn’t want to do before we had the new areas under heat given the time of year we are now facing.

Here’s a few pictures to bring you up to date visually: