Week 13 - Siding 1 & Insulation

The week began with some unexpected decisions about the siding: what style; what material; what depth for the reveal; what kind of trim? Some of this was a part of the design and just needed to be confirmed, other choices had to be made before the materials could be ordered.

Since I want the finished house to fit comfortably into the neighborhood, the framer, the foreman and I stood on the front porch and discussed the options other people had selected. This technique was particularly useful because six of the nine houses on my block were built at the same time and in the same style as mine. Once I decided what I wanted, I touched base with the architect to see if he thought any of them would violate the design. He didn't, so we ordered the materials.

Meanwhile the house was wrapped with felt paper. Somehow this makes it look more like a house and less like a cabin to me. Admittedly it looks like a halloween house, but a house none-the-less.

I also went to Hippo Hardware and got the original mortised lockset for the front door since it fits the holes. The door was picked up and taken to be set into a jamb and will come back early next week.

I started working seriously on the pocket doors, which have to be ready for installation sooner than I expected.

The siding was delivered and started going up fairly quickly, first on the front wall of the office...

... then on the side.

Again the whole look of the house changed quickly and substantially.

The insulation contractor arrived and quickly made the inside look like an explosion at the cotton candy factory. then everything was wrapped in plastic. It got both quieter and warmer right away.

On Friday, the cascading holdup effect took over again. Without specific dimensions for the garage door, the front door, or the porch flooring, none of those areas could be sided, and nobody had or seemed able to get those dimensions. So a portion of the porch rail was built instead. It makes the space seem very much more private and I enjoy sitting out there after everybody is gone.

At the end of the week we moved inside to figure out the tracks for the main room pocket doors, a complicated arrangement that involves three doors coming together. The supports help define the finished size and placement of the door opening for me.

(Again after the fact, it would have been easy and smart at this point to put the hardware on the doors and hang them just to be sure they pulled through the pocket smoothly. We didn't and ended up with headaches later that we might or might not have been able to prevent.)

The house is beginning to look and feel like a home again.

Week 14 - Siding 2