Mother Nature Communes With The House Kit

To quote comedian Daniel Tosh, 

"I don't want to commune with Mother Nature, she's out to kill us all." 

After the last few days, those on the East coast would probably sympathize with Daniel. Mother Nature hasn't tried to kill us on the prefab house site but, she certainly has made rapid progress difficult, if not impossible. While we have accomplished a few things since my last post, the really crucial element of getting dried in, roof on and windows/doors installed, has been made difficult or impossible by the very cold and snowy weather.

We pretty much finished up the wiring and got the tub/showers installed. We started on the siding and did get 4 windows and 1 door installed, but it was cold and messy work. We were also able to install 8 inches of fiberglass insulation between the trusses, which only had 2 X 6 blocks at their base separating the interior from the elements. This was a weak spot in the energy envelope, but between foaming all cracks around the blocking, packing the insulation between the trusses and wrapping it in plastic, we think we have pretty well made this element as tight and resistant to energy loss as the rest of the house. At first I tried to blow in cellulose, but that turned out to be a real bummer. The blowers for that stuff are designed for wide open attics, not the 2 x 2 foot enclosures we'd fabricated. Consequently the stuff just blew all over the place, nearly blinding and asphyxiating me. When I left that day I looked like Pigpen from the Charlie Brown comic strip, with a little cloud of cellulose kicking up around me with each step. Won't try that again!

Eight inches of snow on the roof, however, have prevented getting the shingles on. It looks like we might have a week to 10 days of relatively friendly weather starting tomorrow, and for that reason we removed all the snow from the roof yesterday. Fortunately I had a snow rake that I used to use when we lived in a rather remote area, and we would receive occasional heavy snowfall. When that is the tool you need, nothing else will do. Hopefully, we get the shingles on, siding and doors done, and we will be set to install drywall and flooring.

After that, HVAC, kitchen and finishing up the siding. I'll feel like we're in the home stretch then.