Weeks 5-6.5, the Double-ish Mega Update

We really outdid ourselves this time.  First we were blitzing the house, then real life happened, and we had visitors (i.e. helpers! hooray!) and the struggle, I mean adventure, continued.  So here are around 13 working days' worth of photos, depending on how you count exactly.  At this point things are really starting to heat up!  (And hopefully we'll mean that literally soon, because a wet winter has started to set in here.)

Let's see...where were we?  Oh yes, the roof.

Day 25: Porch has lathing on it now.

Day 25: Eaves-troughs, too!

Day 25: The other porch also has lathing.  Birds are gathering...

Day 25: Another chunk of the ceiling insulation done.

Day 25: Partial lathing on the main roof too.

Day 25: Feeling pretty cosy with all this insulation.

Day 25: Wind blew down our shower again.  It's getting too cold for outdoor showering for us, so we just left it down this time.

Day 25: Getting the tiles ready to go up...!

Then there was a day gap here for some reason.  Probably rain, or possibly the workers had to be somewhere else.

Day 26: The tiles are going up!

Day 26: On the other porch too!  Also you can see some piles prepared on the main roof.

Day 27: Side view as they prep the main roof, which is now fully lathed and eaves-trough'd.

Day 27: Starting the attic insulation--walls first.

Day 27: Also the side walls, although it's hard to see, because all the not-yet-used packs are in the way.  In hind sight we could've laid that out better, perhaps.

Day 27: One side wall progressing fast!  The side walls are short, so that helps.

Day 28: After another gap day, got a bunch done here--back wall is pretty much complete, including finicky angle pieces! 

Day 28: Now these fun parts remain, including making parallelograms, some of which must be one-third the thickness of the normal wall insulation because of these big sideways beams.

Day 29: It rained, and the rain came in here by the side wall :(

Day 29: It also came in by the front wall, where it went up to the edge, and got soaked up by the insulation.  Not cool.  However, the workers later told us it's not a huge deal, since some people actually purposefully soak their insulation in water to help it expand so it's sure to completely fill the space.  We can't picture how one would ever properly dry the stuff out after that, but OK.  (And the worker also said he himself does not do this.)

Day 29: Gettin' dem parallelograms done.

Day 29: Just the awkward apex left, and the part that hangs outside.  Not sure if we're supposed to do that yet.

Day 29: The front wall's done!

Day 29: Ceiling time!  Fortunately some of these fit perfectly without cutting, so that's nice and easy.

Day 30: Another insulation shipment.

Day 30: Yep, lots.  And not all of it was packaged or stored with equal standards, it seemed.

Day 30: Fortunately we were used to this and were able to make short work of getting a lot of it inside.  We left some outside though because according to our estimation, it seemed like we might have a chunk too much.  So we put some extra tarps on it.

Day 30: Things were just cleared up, now it's a tight space again.  I have a feeling we'll see this pattern a few times...

Insert big real-life gap here.  But also we lost a bit of motivation because the roofers discovered there were not enough tiles, so we can't actually put all the insulation in yet anyway.

Day 31: Carrying on, we got a number of rows started.

Day 31: You can see the missing two-thirds of the one half in terms of roofing tiles.  Also the apex was left undone (despite having the tiles) because it's done last to keep it all together properly, it seems.

Day 32: We kept going, and even did up to the apex on the last row, just so it would be complete.  (Not as much water as you'd expect comes in the apex gap when it rains anyway--it was like this even without any tiles.)

Day 32: Got that first row complete down to the bottom, too.

Day 32: By the end of the day, even more rows were filled in completely.

Day 32: On the side with tiles, we filled in all the rows!  Well, to a point.

The next day was a turning point, though!  Well, a potential one.  It was exciting at least.  Took a while before it turned into more of a finished product.

Day 33: The windows and doors came!  Also a laser leveler to help with the ceiling brackets (we have a drop-down ceiling.)

Day 33: They're everywhere.

Day 33: The delivery guy felt really bad for this.  All the other workers had spent such care tip-toeing around this little fig tree with the tractor and vans and everything, and then one rocky moment and the delivery van bumped it to death.  But we cut it into five branches and replanted...who know?  Maybe we will have five nice fig trees in the end instead of just one as a result.

Day 33: We later had a bit of a stressful moment when we measured the windows and doors, and realized that every single one was at least 1 cm too wide for the hole it was supposed to fit into.  Turns out they are not supposed to fit into the hole, but on the inside of the wall, adjacent to the hole.  It made more sense the following week when we were shown how to actually install one.  Phew!

Day 34: Meanwhile, our visitors helped us continue on the roofing insulation.  Some of it turned out to be highly annoying in that it was overly fluffy, so no matter what dimension you cut it, it would not hold itself in the ceiling.  Here we used tape, but this particular one actually fell out a week later.

Day 34: It's hard to see here, but all along the top of the wall, where before there was a hole to the outside where the roof has an overhang, this now is stuffed with insulation too.  Very finicky work done by our voluntold / unsung hero visitors.  :)

Day 34: This is coming along...the rows are looking nice!  We can't do right up to the apex though because the missing roof tiles still haven't arrived.  We were not happy to hear that the tile distribution company actually knew five weeks ago that they had not sent enough tiles (they didn't have enough on hand at the time) and just left it as a ticking time bomb for us rather than saying or doing anything about it at the time.

Day 35: Got the laser level going and put some drywall brackets in the ceiling.  The level was used in the four corners of the one half of the first story.  Then we drew strings tightly between them to fill out the rows and columns of brackets to make a big, alternating grid of them.

Day 35: Then we ran into this anomaly.  Turns out it's no trouble, because it's only two rows wide, and for these two we can just put the bracket outside the weird spot instead of inside where we can't.  (Or we could do it inside, by bending the brackets, apparently.)

Day 35: Our nice grid on one half, mostly done.

Day 36: The proper cutout for the window, and a rough ledge for ti to sit upon.

Day 36: With some expanding insulation tape added.

Day 36: The first window, more or less installed!  It juts out of the wall currently, but we have more wall to build around it, with another layer of insulation, plus drywall.

The next day was very busy.  We got some things done on our end and the contractor also came by and did two of the door/window sets with us.  Plus, the workers returned, and had picked up the tiles along the way, so they finished tiling the roof!

Day 37: Starting to put up the vapor barrier.

Day 37: Have to keep moving these heavy windows and doors around.  It occurred to us later that we should probably also do the upper half to avoid moving each thing twice.  However, this was partly mitigated by our contractor and ever-helpful worker crew helping haul the upstairs ones upstairs for us.

Day 37: Brackets mostly done on the other half now too.

Day 37: Putting in the first glass door set.  We've cut away a beam that was screwed to the floor, and added a smaller piece of wood offset from where that had been for the frame to sit on.

Day 37: There's that tape again.

Day 37: So much more light inside now!

Day 37: Some silicon seal on the outside.

Day 37: From further away.

Day 37: A hole cut for the third such glass door set on the back of the house.  You can also see the apex tile up there!

Day 37: Two done on the side now!

So now we have more windows and doors to do (before the birds move in--already had to chase a few out of the attic), finish the vapor barrier downstairs, finish the attic insulation and then its vapor barrier...and then add more brackets to hold the thinner insulation everywhere.  At this point we're also supposed to plan where electrical outlets will go, so we can put the tubing in for the cables, so that's exciting.  So much to do now, but it's really coming together!