exterior all but finished

With a few minor details, the exterior work is now complete. Here are several views of the house, beginning with a shot similar to earlier ones of the eyebrow dormer, now refinished and repainted, and then moving around the house to view the east side (old dormer and the new stairway dormer), the north side (back of the house), a shot of the west side of the house from the alley behind our house, another shot of the west side from the street in front of the house, and finally a shot of the front of the house.








If we were to do this over and with less limited funds, I think we'd make two changes: one, try to find a way to make the west side a little less blocky. That would be difficult: the blank wall that makes it bulky is a closet, and so a window would be a bad idea to articulate the surface, since it would let in light and UV which would fade our clothes. That "more funds" issue might have made it possible to make the dormer on the east side of the house continuous, which might have allowed us to tuck the closet in on that side, between the stairs and the bedroom...but I'm not sure that would have worked. (That plan still doesn't figure what to do with that dead wall on the west dormer, since that wall is either a closet wall as it is now or a bathroom wall...and we couldn't have windows on three walls of the bathroom and the doorway on the fourth: no place to put the sinks and mirrors.)

The other change might have been to have gone with a lighter, contrasting tan on the walls of the dormers (the soffits and window trim would remain the chocolate brown they are). Rose disagrees, but I think that might have lightened up the massing a bit (do remember: she's the architect, so I'm probably wrong...).

We will be painting the rest of the back exterior wall (on the north) with the same paint color: look closely and you can see that the new material surrounding the window is a slightly different shade from the rest.

Overall, though, we're happy with the exterior. But realistically, it's the interior we care about much more anyway. And as the last photo (from the front of the house) shows, from most angles the new construction is all but invisible anyway.

(Here's a sneak preview of the baseboard moulding, or some of it anyway:)

inside and out

Inside: most of the subflooring has been installed. Here's a picture:



Outside: most of the exterior trim on the old dormer (with the new window) has been installed:



The only exterior that hasn't been initially finished is the rear of the house, which I imagine will get done sometime next week. Tomorrow (oops - later today) the drywallers return to sand and finish the drywall.

more windows

The trim on the exterior of the stairway dormer is nearly done (except for painting), as you can see here:



And the eyebrow dormer window in the front of the house is being restored. Rather than rebuilding the decaying framing (visible in the first image below), they merely applied epoxy to fill in and strengthen that framing, which will then be painted to match.





In other news, the insulation has been reapplied, and while some small areas persist in beginning to tear away, they're small and few enough that we will merely fill them in with spray-on insulation foam and count on the rigid insulation we'll be attaching on the ceilings to eliminate any weak spots. All in all, the insulation problems have set us back about four weeks (going back to my July 12 entry detailing its initial installation and the misadventures of Soffity the Squirrel).

Unfortunately, in any project of this scope some sort of unanticipated setback is nearly inevitable. Fortunately, we had no particular timetable or deadline we needed to meet.

and an update

Siding on the bathroom/closet dormer is nearly complete; siding has begun to be attached to the stairway dormer.



The second paint coat should bring the color closer to the brown of the gable in the back of the house, although the difference now is pretty minor and in keeping with new construction compared to existing, somewhat weathered construction.

Tomorrow the insulation folks are scheduled to core out the insulation in the places where it failed to adhere properly to the wood (a prep issue, it seems - not a problem with the insulation itself). After that (which they supposedly can take care of in a day or so), the new insulation will be applied. We're also going back to our original plan of furring out the ceiling by a half-inch or so and also putting in rigid insulation, just as insurance against any possible unseen contraction in the foam insulation that might occur after it's drywalled over. It's not supposed to do that, and all indications are that the only reason it did so were related to the adhering issue - but more insulation will save money in the long run, and the ceiling height change is minimal enough not to affect anything.

a little sumthin' on the side...

Siding is starting to get put up on the new dormers:



Elsewhere...delays due to situations I'm reluctant to be specific about until we have more info... We don't think it's anything insurmountable - eminently solvable - but a bit of a headache...