Whoosh!

Well, I guess it was important to make up for lost time, but wow.

You might recall we lost a whole week to a plumbing inspector who had no clue about our new radiators and what we’re doing with them. And you might also remember that we were insulating last week and that I’d heard the drywall guy might have to bring in additional crew to deal with our job.

Well, here’s how things actually went.

The spray foam insulation guys finished up on Monday. That was a big deal, and there are photos below, as promised. Once the spray foam was done, we got to deal with the rest of the insulation, which consists of fiberglass bats with a vapor barrier on the exterior walls along with some rigid foam behind the radiator lines. Finally, there is some rockwool on certain interior walls to reduce sound transmission. That second insulation pass started on Tuesday and finished on Wednesday. Tuesday also included shutting down the boiler and removing the old radiators so they would not get in the way of the rest of the insulation or the drywall.

Here are a few photos of the insulation.

This shows the spray foam while it was going up in the living room. You can see how it fills the cavities between the studs in both the wall and the ceiling. It should make a huge difference in keeping the house both warm in the winter and cooler in the summer.

Here’s a close-up of the ceiling in the living room once the spray foam application was done and scraped back to reveal the studs.

That’s the downstairs office. There’s no spray foam in here. Instead, it’s all fiberglass bats and a plastic vapor barrier, along with the blown-in insulation between the walls that I explained in a previous post. Oh, and you can see the pink rigid foam insulation behind the radiator water lines at the bottom. The new storage space wasn’t quite fully insulated when this photo was taken, but it is now.

And finally, in the laundry room, you get to see the full mix. Bat & poly (aka polyethylene sheeting as the vapor barrier) mixed with spray foam on the bottom where there was concrete and not enough depth to otherwise insulate things properly with just fiberglass.

The black lines are an acoustic sealant that forms an air seal between the plastic sheeting and the wood. The plastic is also stapled down.

Wednesday was crazy:

• The insulation guy arrived in the morning to finish up the bat & poly, and then do the rockwool sound insulation.
• Then the general contractor arrived to work on a few issues here & there.
• Around 10 am, a delivery truck showed up with a huge load of drywall and finishing products.
• While that was unloading, the inspector arrived to review the insulation. He was here just a couple of minutes before saying he would pass us and left. He needed the engineer’s sign-off on the spray foam installation first, which the contractor got on Tuesday, so that was all formalities.
• Then the drywaller showed up. The materials he needed aren’t even all unloaded yet, but he’s here. He reviewed the job with us and the contractor, and it turns out it’s just going to be one guy hanging all the drywall. (I expected more, particularly given the comment about needing to bring in more people, but apparently not.) Once the delivery truck was gone, he got out his tools and set to work.
• Meanwhile, the finisher arrived to look over the job. He’s currently working a job down the street and wanted to get a handle on this one, since he’s been told it’s complicated. (Which it is.) He’s basically going to wind up the other job and then come work on ours just as soon as the drywaller is done. Probably Monday.
• During all that chaos, we got an email from our plumbing supply company. All our fixtures are in. When would we like to pick them up? (Turns out everything even includes the medicine cabinet that was supposedly eight weeks out and the mirrored side panels for it that were six months out. Go figure.) I told them I would pick it all up on Thursday, which I did. It all barely fit into the Honda Fit, but I got it home.
• By the time the drywaller left on Wednesday evening, he had half the ceiling and most of the laundry room covered. He moves fast.

Wednesday night, I felt like I’d spent the day in a blender. Things were happening so quickly that all I could do was hang on.

But it’s good. The progress is real, and it’s nice to see.

Anyway, Thursday and Friday saw continued work on the drywall, and again, the guy really is fast.

Click to enlarge, I think.

Each of those shows bits of the house (living room, kitchen, guest bedroom) partially drywalled. He might even finish today (Friday), but that isn’t yet certain.

Mostly, I am trying to stay out of the way. We’re getting to the point where there aren’t that many decisions needed each day, so at some level things are simpler. That frees me up to think about other things or just collapse in a heap if that is what I need to do.

In other news, Tinkerbelle continues to be good. Her next vet appointment is on Monday, and we’ll see what happens then.

Given the week, that’s all there is to report. I suspect that next week the taper/finisher will be busy, but I cannot confirm that yet. Rumor says he will start on Monday. You’ll hear about it next week when I’ve got a better handle on things.

Cheers!

Elbows up, everyone! Well, except Russia and North Korea for some reason. Weird.