Originally, we had wanted to keep the beams under the roof exposed. However, because our house sits too close to the property line, we are required to have fire- rated material under the eaves, which also needed to be vented. Yay more costs! The easiest material to use is gypsum board, which we installed. However, the aesthetics of that purple board leaves something to be desired, so we had it covered in shiplap wood.
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The windows and doors have been taped and the second coat of exterior plaster is on, which means there is no more visible straw. Our house looks NORMAL(ish)! This hasn't been without difficulties. On Sunday (my birthday), Peter and I were feeling victorious. We had spent the weekend installing the final bits of straw and had just ~2 hrs of plaster lath installation to go, which could be done Monday night. Plasterers were scheduled for Tuesday. On Monday, Peter met with our build team and they finalized window details. Basically - it means the team bought and installed fancy expensive tapes to ensure good air sealing between the windows and window bucks. Tuesday morning I went out to cover a couple of minor issues with the plasterers. Then I learned that the plaster would not adhere to the tapes. This meant more plaster lath would need to go over the tapes (they are self sealing, so puncturing them is not the end of the world, but still not great). The plaster crew though needed to get started, because I had 8 guys on site, whose time was money. Several frantic calls/texts to our general contractor site manager, plaster contractor, strawbale expert, and architect later, we settled on paying the plaster crew to install plaster lath over the tape. I then went to work 2 hrs late. Little did we expect, but the plaster crew went on to REMOVE at least $1000 worth of tape, and more in value of our general construction crew's work. We still don't entirely know why this happened. Tuesday evening and Wednesday we franticly tried to troubleshoot where the tapes were most necessary, order more, get them up , and ensure plaster lath was installed on top before the plaster crew started work on the interior on Friday. Today is Thursday, and we seemed to have gotten it done. Building a house is stressful. But at least the result looks pretty? |
AuthorKatie Jones and Peter Schmitt chronicle their building adventure. Archives
January 2024
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