Happy Halloween

The delivery of the Structural Insulated Panels (SIP) was delayed until about noon, so the crew spent their time mounting the garage walls they had framed a couple of weeks ago. These shots show the garage from a few different angles. The top pic is the connection to the mudroom, the next from the rear and finally, from the driveway.

In addition to the garage, the guys erected the bent that will support the covered portion of the deck. I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to get to the outer face at the top of the bent to keep it sealed and treated as the years go by. The obvious answer is a ladder, but that's a lot of up-down-move for a two story ladder. Maybe a big hook mounted at the apex, a harness and Ellen swinging me to and fro? Something like that should be captured on video, but I'm hoping a better solution occurs to me! This underscores why we abandoned a log home though. Wood that's exposed to the elements has to be maintained, no matter how much a log home salesman tries to convince you otherwise.You'd be amazed at some of the pitches we heard on this point. I was. While I'll have a little work to do on this house, it's just that, a little work to do, not a massive, whole house treatment every two to five years, and caulking cracks (called checking) EVERY year. Ellen, whose life long dream was a log home, is totally on board with this and considers timber frame the only way to go now.

Here's a SIP and a few that have been mounted. The window opening shown is over the door to the deck from the great room. I had a busy Friday and wasn't able to make it to the site. Ellen wasn't able to get there until the guys were ending their efforts for the day.

Since it was Halloween, I'd like to digress a moment and talk about the scariest thing that comes to mind....the decision we very nearly made to be our own general contractor. It literally makes my skin crawl to imagine that and the certain debacle we would have made of this home project. It's not that we're stupid, ignorant for sure, but not stupid. It's the time you have to devote to something like this to educate yourself, select and coordinate the subs, manage them, and inspect the work. We both have full time jobs and then some, when you consider all of the hours we invest. I am very thankful that we recognized the vacant stare in each other's eyes for what it was on that day we decided to pony up the cash for a contractor. Otherwise, this halloween post is a REAL horror story.

Back to merely describing things....Ellen said the guys weren't particularly happy with the work necessary to mount the SIPs. First of all, the screws used to afix the SIP to the timbers require a considerable amount of torque to securely fasten. Our most excellent carpenter told Ellen that he's going to Lowe's this weekend to find a better tool for it. That was a surprise. I had also thought that the panels were joined with a spline, which sounds quick and painless. Maybe they are, but you also have to drill holes and shoot foam into them to fill any gaps and then caulk the seams. Looks to be more labor intensive than we anticpated, so now I'm a little concerned about our budget and the time allotted for this step. That will be my #1 subject when we talk to our GC this weekend.