Well the house is coming along rapidly now! It hasn't been as exciting to drive by these days. Now that the structure is up, the changes are a lot less evident from the street. However on the inside, lots of good things have been completed. The HVAC system is in, as is all the plumbing and electrical. The past two weeks have been all about insulation. First they had a crew come in with spray foam insulation, and they insulated all of the areas where there were holes cut into the wood frame. So around every door, window, electrical box, wire, plumbing fixtures, heater vent opening, etc.
The next step (before they could do insulation in the walls) was to install the exterior siding. I think that had to go up before the insulation, so that they could make sure there were no holes or air gaps in the walls before the insulation hid all of the evidence of that. Once the siding was mostly complete, they had a wall insulation crew come in and install the standard fiberglass insulation sheets in all of the walls and ceilings. Oddly enough, that insulation was brown, not pink. I thought all fiberglass insulation was pink for some reason!
The city insulation inspection was at the end of this week and we passed with flying colors, so on Friday they started putting up sheets of drywall. As of this morning, a good amount of the downstairs has been completed, though they haven't started any of the upstairs yet. At the rate they are working though, that should be done by the middle of next week or so. The exterior siding as well as the trim around all the windows and doors, is now complete on the sides and back of the house. They were starting to install siding and trim on the front of the house, just yesterday morning in fact. The front of the second story will actually have shingles, so I imagine those will take a little longer to install. But hopefully by this coming Wednesday, the interior will be fully drywalled, and the exterior will be fully sided!
There was a bit more to choosing the siding material than I had anticipated at the outset actually. The standard these days, is actually to use fiber cement board (hardie board) siding on all new construction homes. Most builders use it on all sides of the home, but our builder generally uses wood on the front (for aesthetic reasons), and hardie board on the sides. So we had to research that a bit to decide if that was what we wanted and was going to be the best material, long term, for our home. After doing some research, and talking to people who had hardie board on their homes, we found the following pros:
Hardie board has excellent longevity, and most comes with a 50-year warranty. This siding is also extremely rot and insect
resistant and can even handle ocean salt spray.
Hardie board siding is 90% cement and sand, which makes it fire-resistant. I've read stories of houses burning down and taking neighboring houses with it, only the houses with hardie board siding remained unscathed!
Cement board siding is also extremely weather resistant and high winds, rocks and hail do not damage it. Not to mention it has a 15 year warranty for siding finishes like paint. Most of the people we talked to said their paint had been good for 20 years+!
In the end there is a lot to like about this type of siding, and we were so impressed with the reviews, that we decided to forgo the wood siding on the front of the house, and just have it put everywhere. Now that I am driving around town and seeing other homes being built, I see that that is fairly standard here anyway! It will be painted the same color as our current house (grey/blue, with white trim and a red door), as early as next week! We actually really like how they rendered it in the original architectural drawing, so it should look fairly similar to that when its done. As always, I will continue to post updates and pictures as things happen!
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