Good Progress

On Thursday, the guys started bright and early setting up the scaffolding when I left for work.
When I came back, they had the SW wall of the Master Bath all done, as you can see here.

Then, they shoveled out the dirt out of the way along the next wall and installed the bottom aluminum flashing.

They had to make a trip into town to get some supplies, including some cedar wood to make some furring strips.

Because the basement is not *gasp* perfect, when the framer laid down the main floor in a couple of walls, the main floor projects over the basement a little. On this wall, it is about a half an inch. Structurally speaking, this isn't a problem. But, when it comes to siding, it makes it tricky. Hence, the furring strips.

In this picture you can see the concept. The furring strips were ripped to size from the cedar boards (so they won't rot with time). The furring strips are installed, and this will make the bottom basement flush with the main floor so that the siding will look right. The siding is installed on top of the furring strips.

At the bottom you can see some screen the guys are using to seal up that gap to keep insects and rodents from climbing up behind the siding.
You can also see Derald adding the extra Tyvek paper.

Some in the industry consider the use of furring strips behind the siding as a best management practice. In an ideal situation, you would put furring strips on the whole house and install your siding above that. This, they say, is to provide an air gap that allows any water that may get behind the siding to drain away and never have a chance to find its way inside the wall and rot away the framing. But that's a new trend, and who has time to put furring strips (not to mention the additional costs)?
What we did was to make sure we had proper flashing around the windows, and that the drainage plane (the tyvek) is installed correctly and any cuts or tears are taped and fixed. This way, moisture behind the siding will drain on the tyvek paper out and away from our framing members.

On Friday, Shawn and Derald did all they had to do to get ready for siding boards on the next two walls (locate and mark all the studs, extra tyvek, vertical and horizontal trim, bandboard, z-flashing, starter strips, move scaffolding around, etc.)
By then end on the day, they were well on their way with the siding, as evidenced in this picture.

My mother in-law arrived on Friday evening. She came to teach us how to butcher chickens. In case you forgot, earlier this year we got a batch of chicks in the mail. Out of 20 chickens, 9 turned out to be roosters. And though they are very handsome to look at, more than 2 roosters per 10 hens is too much. Not to mention two of them were very mean to our 2.5 year old, and one finally attacked him out-right. Since they didn't have spurs, they didn't hurt Evan, but that was enough of that. So, on Saturday morning the construction work was delayed while my FIL decapitated 5 of the 9 roosters, then we plucked them. The 4 remaining are on their grace period. If they misbehave, they will end up like the other five.

They guys went back to work, and my MIL taught me how to properly gut out and prepare the chickens for the freezer. My idea to get 100 broilers next year to raise to butcher them is now going to be on hold, indefinitely. I'll stick with pets that lay eggs, and make sure to order new chicks sexed as hens only. Oh, and by the way, we're getting about 2 eggs every other day now. Neat!

Back to construction:
This is a picture of the progress made in the three days of siding. So this side is done for now. There are a few details that we need to figure out around those window wells for the bottom windows before we can side that bottom wall.

So next, Shawn will move onto the other side of the house. We will leave the front of the house for last, since we will be switching to a shingle style siding on that front bedroom.

Shawn was gone on a business trip since Sunday, until last night, so no more work was done on the house since Saturday.

Till next week.