In addition to fixing the ceiling insulation, I also decided to run a strip of adhesive weatherstrip-type foam around all of the wall bottom plates. There's a technique implemented to make houses more energy efficient known as the Airtight Drywall Approach (ADA), which is basically intended to limit as much airflow from the inside of the house to the outside. Drywall itself, especially when taped, textured, and painted, is virutally airtight. But, all around the edges of the drywall, such as at windows or floors, there are many gaps which aren't normally sealed. You would think the drywall would be screwed and nailed flush to the studs, but due to minor differences in the lumber, all of the resulting small gaps can add up to a surprising amount of airflow getting through. In our climate, especially in the winter, this means lots of expensive hot air can flow out unabated, which is a waste of money... but on top of that, when the warm and moist interior air comes in contact with the cool exterior walls and cool underside of the roof sheeting, the moisture condenses and can rot the structure of the house over time. So anyway, since we're having all of the walls and ceilings covered with drywall, as well as having the window boxes and closet doors drywall wrapped, we only need the foam strip around the bottom plates. I also previously spray-foamed all of the electrical boxes for outlets/switches/etc., and once the drywall is on, I'll caulk all of the seams around the electrical boxes as well. All of this should result in a much tighter house in the long run. We'll find out next winter, I hope, as we're already past the cold part of this winter and rapidly approaching Spring. Anyway, here's a photo of the toilet room, with the foam strip installed all around the bottom plates... note also the spray foam sealing the plumbing penetrations and the bottom of the bottom plates at the exterior wall:
The drywall hangers did finally come... here's a photo of the stairs and dining area freshly wrapped with sheetrock- it was really exciting to finally see the walls getting all closed up:
And here's the front entry area, with Peanut illuminating the room:
Here's the spray-foamed portion of the upstairs ceiling after the first day of drywall hanging:
After all the drywall was installed, there was quite a mess of scrap left over... I hauled a truckload to the dump, only to find out the next day that the drywall guys were planning to do that themselves. Of course, that should be expected, but the house was so ridiculously dusty from all the scrap around that I just wanted to get it cleaned up as soon as possible.
Once all the drywall was hung, Pete and I did some final touch up work here and there, and added in a few more metal corner beads at a couple of the closet wraps that I forgot to request when the drywall co. originally gave us the bid. After a total of about two weeks of work, with the taping/texturing guys coming every other day to add another coat then wait for it to dry, all of the drywall and texture was finished. Again, there is still some touch up stuff to do, like the window boxes in the original portion of the house downstairs, but all of the new stuff is done. Now we gotta start thinking about paint. Here's a shot of some test areas where we tried out different colors in the kitchen:
Here's the kitchen and entry area all textured and ready for paint:
Master bedroom ready for paint:
The next photo shows one of the touch-up areas downstairs that still needs to be finished. This is where the plumbing comes down from upstairs through the wall between the downstairs bedroom and the living room. This last weekend, I finally finished up the drain pipe plumbing under the house, as I had never actually connected the main stack into the existing waste/sewer pipes. As always, the plumbing was a bit of a pain in the ass, especially having to cut into the existing shit tube... but it's finally done, and it amazingly does not leak. After I took this photo, I covered it all with drywall, and now it just needs to be taped and textured. It's really nice not having a gaping hole in our current bedroom wall anymore... (in case anyone is wondering, the middle stud in the photo below is non-load-bearing, which is a good thing because it's obviously way out of plumb... but I decided to just leave it as-is since it has a couple electrical outlets mounted to it, and it really has no effect on anything else. It kinda looks like it was added in at some point purely as a mounting point for the outlets, which seems odd... but hey, this house has seen lots of odd things slapped onto it over the years):
And finally, here's some current shots of the exterior of the house with the siding all installed. Of course, the siding is just primered right now, but even so, we're pretty happy with how it turned out. It definitely looks like a real house from the outside (despite the lack of real stairs to the front door):
That's pretty much it for now. We'll probably get some interior painting done this weekend, then move on to ordering/installing interior doors, then tile in the bathroom, then flooring, etc.
