We're onto the second half of the back

Shawn's parents came down on Friday night, so we could get an early start on Saturday.
First thing the guys did was to set up the second level to the scaffolding so they could reach higher. Then they set out to mark the studs along the wall on the outside.

Derald and Keith had done this a week earlier, but this time, Shawn wanted to snap a chalk line along each stud.

So Derald was inside the house on a ladder and would drop the chalk line over the eaves at the top of the wall and line it up with the center of the stud.

Outside, Shawn would use a level to level out the string and also measure the distance from the previous stud, then snap the line.

With that done, they proceeded to start laying the first two rows of siding above the band board (the big fat piece of trim between floors.) It takes quite a while to lay one board now because of all of the climbing up and down ladders and scaffolding.

Then, they cut and installed the trim around the master bedroom window since the scaffolding was already located under it.

After lunch, they had to dig into the dirt quite a ways so they could move the scaffolding over to the end of the wall. The ground slopes at that end, and it took a while to get the scaffolding to sit level.

Then they proceeded to trim around the bathroom window at that end, and they started again on starting the third row of siding. And by then it was already 6 pm and quitting time.
On Monday, Shawn put a piece of siding under the master bedroom window, and did the 4th row of siding up to the window. Now he's going to side all the way up between windows.

While the boys were siding on Saturday, Pam mowed all day. First she rode the lawn mower, then she took the brush mower in front of the new house, and when she ran out of gas, she discovered that the push mower had some, so she went around trimming trees with that. I wish I had that kind of energy! After she was done, our yard looked like a decent yard again.

I baby sat Evan and we supervised the work of the others.

I combined a couple of pictures to show a view of what the back of the house looks as of now. Once Shawn is done siding between bathroom and bedroom, he will have to take the scaffolding down, and move it over and side between bedroom and living room windows. We are going to buy a third level to scaffolding so that Shawn can reach up into the gable area above the living room windows.

You can also see in the picture right below the sliding door upstairs there's no siding. That's because there will be a deck installed there and we need to get the deck rim joist installed and then we can side around that. So, probably will do that here soon as Shawn gets closer to that side of the house to side.

That's it for now. More next week.

Overdue pictures

Here are the pictures from two weekends ago where my in-laws came with Shawn's uncle Keith and his family to help out.

In the morning, Pam and Aunt Wanda painted siding, and the cousins painted the trim boards.

Here you can see cousins Kelly and Chelsea as they paint some siding boards in the afternoon. Then once they painted the boards, they transferred them to the rack that Shawn made to hold the boards while they dried. Once dry, Shawn loaded them onto the Orange Crush to haul them to the new house.



In this picture you can see Derald testing the scaffolding they set up to reach a bit higher. There is a second level to the scaffolding that will be added once we start siding the main floor on the back.

And here, you can see Uncle Keith (in blue) assisting Shawn as they installed some siding.

to bring it all to the level of the top of the windows.






In these pictures, Pam and Wanda were hard at work sweeping out the inside of the basement and organized tools and materials in there. It was hot work, but they had fun as well.



















Last week, Shawn put the brown z-flashing over the windows, and finished siding the back of the basement.

Yes, indeed, the back of the basement is done, thought I didn't take a picture yet.
This week, when it was not raining, Shawn began installing the z-flashing over the thick band board trim that's between the basement and the main floor. He also began cutting the starter strip to do the first row of siding on the main floor at the back.

Pam and Derald are once again coming to help on Saturday. So, we'll get the second part of the scaffolding up, and we'll work on getting the trim around the windows done, then the siding will commence. Since now we'll be on the wood framing, maybe things will be a little bit faster since Shawn can get the nail-gun out instead of having to hand-screw the siding.

I'll try to remember to take a picture of the finished baseement to upload tomorrow. If not, until next week with more progress.

Ciao

Running a week behind in posts

This was supposed to be last weeks post.

Anyway, Shawn's parents came down on the weekend of the 20th, and Pam did a lot of painting of siding pieces. She also took it upon herself to mow our yard and to take the weed brush mower to the weeds in front of the house. That was nice.
At least the weeds help to keep the rain from eroding the house.

On the siding, Derald and Shawn made good progress. Here's a picture from that weekend's work. During the week, Shawn worked on bringing the level of siding up to the top of the windows.

Then last weekend, Derald and Pam came back again and they brought reinforcements. Shawn's uncle Keith and his family came down to help.

Shawn's aunt, Wanda and Pam painted siding, while Shawn's cousins Kelly and Chelsea painted trim boards.

Unfortunately, Shawn was sidelined with a migraine that day, so we were on our own as to what to do. Keith and Derald set up the scaffolding so that Shawn can side higher now. Also, they marked all of the studs along the main floor on the back wall, so that was nice.

After lunch, Shawn joined the fray and they finished siding the back wall up to the top of the windows. Then they tried to do the row of siding that would cover all of the windows. They realized then that there was a problem with the spacing, and had to take down that row. It was disappointing and it was 5 pm, so time to call it quits. But on the other hand it was a good thing, that they took that row of siding down. We overlooked the fact that we need to put some of that z-flashing above the horizontal trim at the top of the windows before the siding can continue.

So that's what Shawn has done on what little time he can find during the week. I was gone for a business trip, so not much more progress.

Tomorrow we have off work due to the 4th of July holiday, and Shawn took this afternoon off to hopefully get a good chunk of work done. The goal is to finish siding the basement back wall this weekend.

I'll try to upload pictures next week. Have a safe holiday! God bless.

Progress is slow, but moving onward

The little solosider gauges seem to work ok, and so far Shawn hasn't complained about them. It has allowed him to work the few hours after dinner and before nightfall (when it is not raining) without my help. Evan is being a bit difficult and will not go to bed as early as he used to, so by the time I am free to help, Shawn is putting tools away. So it is nice that the siding gauges allow him to work alone. Now my estimate is that it will be November, and not December when the siding is all done. :)

The problem that we've (I mean Shawn, mostly when I say we) encountered is keeping the siding to maintain a level course. We are suspecting that the foam is somehow shifting under the weight of the siding, because Shawn will get a board up perfectly level, but the next day it is not level anymore. (though the shift is so miniscule we might be splitting hairs) Perhaps a professional sider will laugh at us at how preocuppied we are with keeping things level, since they seem to just slap the boards up and never really check for level on every course.

Here's a nice picture of the progress Shawn has made on the siding. The little square box you see just below and in between the small windows is a mount block where a hose bib will be installed.

There's been a little bit of a learning curve on notching the pieces of siding to fit around windows and getting the angle cuts where the bottom trim board goes up at an angle. It also takes a lot of time to make sure that any cuts on the boards are painted and sealed good since we will not be caulking the butt joints. This is to protect from moisture so that the siding pieces do not wick water, expand, and bubble the paint or fail.
And here's a picture of our weed garden. They have taken over the rough grading around the house, and it's too uneven and full of nails to drive the lawn mower on it. We might have to use the sickle mower in it. On the plus side, with all those roots, our soil is not eroding quite as bad when it rains.

So we are looking quite the boontuckians at the moment, but there's only so much time and so much energy, and the weeds will have to wait.

My in-laws were on vacation up in Alaska, but they can not compare all those beautiful sites and relaxing journeys to the fun of siding our house. So they are once again coming down on Saturday to give us a hand. I swear that if it wasn't for their help, we would still be stacking foam blocks to get a basement built! So we really appreciate all of the time that they take away from their lives to help us out.

Anyway, weather outlook is good for the weekend, so hopefully lots of progress will be made. Perhaps the next picture on the blog will be of the back of the basement completely sided under the band board. That would be sweet!

Happy Father's day! And until next week.

Sadly, no real post this week.

I could re-post the pictures from last week, since there's been no progress. The two days we had time to work on the house, it rained. So there's that. Hopefully, maybe this weekend it will be a different story.

We did buy a pair of solosiders and are waiting for them to arrive. What are solosiders you ask?
Check out http://www.solosider.com/instructions.html and look at the installation video.
Supposedly, these gadgets will make it possible for *ahem, cough, Shawn, cough, ahem* one person to install the siding solo. We'll see if they work as good as they claim.
So hopefully next week, there will be an update.

Ta da!

Here it is: The first piece of siding.
It has been difficult to get this right, but we are confident that by December, we will have this house sided.

Shawn painted all of the trim boards at the end of last week, to get ready for work on Saturday. He also started placing the first coat of paint on the fiber cement siding pieces. He rigged up our small utility trailer so that it could hold the 12 ft. boards with enough support to keep them straight. You can see the trailer with some siding in the picture above.

This way we can paint the siding over where it is stored by the barn, then load it onto the trailer in layers (with foam in between to protect the paint) then haul the trailer to the back of the house to use the siding.

On Saturday, Pam and Derald arrived for a good day of work. Pam was assigned to painting the siding pieces. The process involved taking a piece of siding from the bundle, placing it on the saw horses to paint so that the edges can be coated, then moving the piece onto the trailer to dry. When the trailer was full, the painted pieces were on pallets to allow them to dry. By the time the pallets were full, the siding on the trailer was dry, so a layer of foam scraps were placed on top, and another layer of newly painted pieces went on that, and so on.
You can see Pam in the picture as she rolled some paint on a siding piece. The weather was perfect for drying paint quickly. We tried to device a better, faster way to paint siding, but there's no getting around painting the edges if we want to do a quality job. So we couldn't really come up with a quick way to do what was needed.

While Pam was busy painting, the guys worked on installing the trim along the bottom of the wall. Here you can see Derald stepping back to admire the bottom trim progress. After the bottom was installed, Shawn and Derald trimmed out all of the windows and the door on the basement.

Once the windows were trimmed, they installed the 12" Band board trim that is between the basement and first floor. This is a good picture that shows all of these in one shot.

There was a lot of work accomplished on Saturday, and the bottom of the basement was then ready to begin the process of siding.
On Sunday we went to Menards to exchange the z flashing to get the correct size, and they told us the only color it comes in is brown. I find this hard to believe, and even though the racks at Menards say white z flashing, only brown was in those. So, we shrugged. It will get painted anyway.
Sunday and Monday, Shawn installed the z-flashing that is required to direct water from getting behind trim on all horizontal joints between trim and siding. He also ripped a piece of siding to make a starter strip. This is so when the first piece of siding is installed, it has the correct angle.

Here is a close-up. You can see the white trim, then the brown z-flashing, then the gray piece of starter strip installed on top of the z-flashing. You can also see in the picture how the trim covered the fasteners on the white PVC flashing below.

We think it looks nice.

On Tuesday, Shawn had to re-do the starter strip since the gap between the strip and the z-flashing was not enough and had to increase it. He also painted the starter strip since water might wick up it, and since he loves painting so much.

And finally, yesterday, he installed the first row of siding on the back. You can see a small gray square above the siding where the butt joints are between pieces. These are small pieces of pvc flashing that is used to help any wind driven rain or water that might get behind the siding at the butt joints to divert it down and out.

So on every butt joint, you place this piece of flashing overlapping the course below. Here is a close up.

Now after seeing the brown peeking under the siding, we sort of think it doesn't look too bad. It's like a little accent piece, and we may decide to not paint it after all. We'll see once we're ready to paint if we still feel the same.

Tonight, it is a trip to Lowe's to get some mount blocks for lights, outdoor outlets, and hose bibs. I also think we need new respirator cartridges to make sure they keep out silica dust. The dust from cutting fiber cement boards contains silica instead of asbestos now, though silica dust is just as nasty for your lungs as asbestos is.

We'll see what sort of progress we have for next week. Until then, God bless.

It's begun...

We can officially say that we have some siding on the house (though I do not have a picture to back that claim; I forgot to take some pictures).

Anyway, Shawn recovered from his nasty flu only to give it to me, so I was sidelined from any sort of activity for a week. So we didn't do any work last week as we'd hoped. And then, we decided to host a paintball party on Friday as a farewell get together for Shawn's brother, Brian, who is leaving to go to seminary in June.

Here's a picture of the bunch before the paintballing began.

The war began around 2:30 pm by the time they had all the guns and ammo set-up, then off they went in the wilderness. Everyone had fun shooting at each other, though Shawn spent most of his time being the field mechanic fixing the pebble shooters that kept having an issue.

I declined to participate in the mayhem with the perfect excuse of watching the little ones in attendance.

Here's a picture of the bunch after the games were set and done. After a bit of grilling, Shawn's older brother, Chad and his family arrived for their weekend visit, then we all headed out to the back of the property for a nice bonfire to finish off a great day.

Saturday, we spent it with Chad and his family. Shawn and Chad took some of the kids down the river in the canoe, and had a great time.

They left in the evening to go visit Brian, then we met them again on Sunday for lunch.

Evan refused to take a nap most of Sunday, so we had little chance to work outside, though we did get the tyvek finished on the back windows once he finally went down for his nap.

On Monday, we primed some of the band boards and trim for the back.

Then Shawn installed some metal flashing on the corners of the ICF block to use to hang the siding from it. The plastic ties at the corners are not large enough to extend beyond the trim, so we needed something to use so we can screw the siding. The flashing is a technique used by some of the ICF contractors, and it seems like it will work fine.

Shawn found a scrap piece of sheet metal in the barn, and cut it into strips. Now we are trying to locate some more, since the galvanized metal flashing that they sell at lowe's is too thin. We need at least a 20 gauge sheet metal to be strong enough to hold the siding weight. A local welding shop has some, but we're shopping around to see if we can find something at a better price. Some of the heating and cooling contractors sell sheet metal since they use it to make ductwork for HVAC.

Then after arguing and almost signing the divorce papers over how to handle the corner trim, we finally agreed on something and installed the two trim pieces for the corners on the back. (I'll get some pictures tomorrow, maybe). Then Evan woke up from his nap and that was the end of Constructin time, plus it started raining, so we put the tools away and called it quits.

Yesterday, it rained... a lot, so no more work. Good news is that the in-laws are coming down on Saturday to lend us a hand, so we're hoping to make good progress. Tonight, if weather permits, we'll try to get some trim cut to fit around the windows, and maybe we can prime the boards.
Maybe we can work inside the basement if it is raining, so that at least some progress is being made.

Hopefully, there will be nice progress for next blog update. We'll be praying for good weather and good time.

Pictures to go with last post

Ok, here are the pictures that were missing from last post.
On this picture you can see the pvc coated aluminum flashing that we installed. That's the white strip running along the bottom of the wall along the grade line. (Ignore the unfinished tyvek on the windows, in case you did notice that!) The siding requires that you stay at least 6" away from the ground, so when the siding goes up, you need to cover the exposed foundation.

Here is a close up of the aluminum flashing. The dirt will hide the fasterners on the bottom, and the siding will be installed to cover the fasterners at the top, for a nice professional look.
There hasn't been much progress since Shawn has been down with the flu.

And guess what? UPS did deliver the gun and they swore up and down that they left it at our house. Truck driver had to come out there again, and ooops, I guess it was the neighbor's house. So we got the gun on Wednesday night. Here's the proud owner of the new air nailer.

That sucker is huge! We ordered 7000 nails from fastenerusa.com on Tuesday, and they showed up last night. If you need stainless steel nails for your air guns, check out their site - great service and quick delivery! Plus free shipping, and they were half the price of what we could get from lowes. Can't beat that.

Yesterday, Shawn stayed home because he finally listened to me that he needs rest to recoup from his nasty flu. He felt like taking a small nap after breakfast and didn't wake up until 2 pm!
After that, he was good as new, and with 7000 nails sitting at the door to boot!

So when I got home from work, he was building a mock-up of our walls to test out the nails. There were some questions we had about the nails blowing out the back of the siding, and also how well the nails would work in the plastic webs that are embedded in the insulated concrete form. So after taking a pause while he did a bit of grilling, Shawn put the siding, the nailer and the nails to the test.

On the framing portion in the main floor, the nails will work perfect. That nailer is a beauty. Seems easy to use, and a few tweaks of the pressure, and the nails are set perfect.

Not so with the basement. We had a few scraps of the blocks around, and Shawn put a piece of siding on them and shot some nails into them. The nails crack and split the plastic ties apart, and a simple tug of the siding pulls the nails right off! Here's a picture of the plastic tie after we took the foam out to investigate. You can see where the plastic tie split and broke off, basically leaving the siding unattached.

Here is a picture of the siding being screwed into the plastic tie for comparison. The tie stays intact, and when we tried to rip the siding off, the screw was pulling through the siding, and not budging.

So, the choice is clear. We have to screw the siding on the basement. It will probably take longer to hand drive each screw, rather than shoot a nail with the nail gun. But after seeing the difference between the two methods, there's no other choice.

So now we have about 3000 nails too many, but living out in an acreage, I am sure there will be plenty of opportunity to use them somewhere. I think my new chicken roost poles and nest boxes will be sporting some shiny stainless steel nails! So today I'm ordering 2500 stainless steel screws for fiber cement siding, and we will start installing some trim when those arrive. If we're lucky, they'll be here by Monday.

Until next time!

Waiting

According to UPS we should have received our new air gun yesterday. But it wasn't our place they delivered it, because we couldn't find it anywhere. So we're waiting for a call to see if they can figure out where they left it.

Last weekend I ordered the nails from Lowes, then yesterday I canceled the order. I found the same nails online for half of the price, so that was a nice chunk of change we saved, without even switching to Geicko.

Also, we met Shawn's parents on Sunday for a Mother's day picnic, and to collect the air compressor that Derald is lending to us. If we ever get that nail gun, then we can start playing with the siding, once the nails arrive.

We did start installing the PVC coated aluminum flashing that we are using to cover the exposed basement wall between the ground level and the siding. I'd show some pictures, but I forgot to upload the pictures. I'll try to do that tomorrow.

There is still quite a bit that needs to be done before a single piece of siding goes up, but I think we have most of them figured out. We will be siding the back first, so that hopefully by the time we get to the front we'll have the kinks worked out. We'll see.

Also, our neighbor to the south has started building their new house. Footings and basement have been poured, and I assume framing will start sometime this week if they get it backfilled. By the time we get started on the siding, their contractor will probably be finished with their siding.

Phase II work is finally beginning

Let's start off with a few pictures of the Barn. The insurance company thinks the work is acceptable, so they have agreed to continue to insure our old house. I did a second coat on the door, and trimmed with white around the windows. I tried to do a fake window on the one that is boarded up, and it's all right, but you can definitely tell it's a fake. I think if someday I have the time or inclination, I'll paint the fake "panes" a dark blue to blend in better. The two windows to the right were all fixed up for my new chicken coop. Sometime soon, I have to build a run for the chickens (a wired area so they can come out and be safe from predators) so I 'll need a door through the wall to the coop. But that's for another blog discussion. :)

Shawn started off our next phase of the building project by doing some foam around the interior of the windows when it was raining and cold couple of weeks ago. This is a picture of the basement window with the over-sized buck. He is using pieces of scrap DOW blue board insulation to fill in the gap, and foaming around the blue board to seal it good. You can also see the bead of foam between the window and the wood framing.

This next picture shows the same technique being used between the wood I-joists in the floor. Shawn, again. is using scrap pieces of foam, sealed with some expanding foam to seal the rim joist and minimize the heat loss through this spot. This is to ensure a super-tight air infiltration seal, which will all pay off when it is time to heat and cool the home. The greatest loss of heat (or gain in summertime) occurs because of the air infiltrating into the house. It takes energy to heat that air that then leaks out, while it takes more energy to heat the cool air that filters in through gaps (or vice-versa in the summertime). Our goal is to do our best super-insulation, super-airtight construction. This, of course, will mean that we will need an air exchanger to mechanically supply the house with fresh air for proper ventilation. But it also means that our heating and cooling loads will be much smaller than typical for a house this size, which in turn will mean we won't need as big of mechanical equipment. Thus we hope to gain some savings. But those nifty details will have to wait.

Right now we will be focusing on the siding. In the original plan, we were going to be running the water line from the meter to the house, the electric line from the meter to the house, and tying the sewer line into the septic. Then we were going to finish shaping up the grading, then do the siding. For this work, we needed to rent a mini-excavator, a skid loader, and all of the supplies for the job. Not to mention that because of the new Iowa electrical law, we have to hire someone to do the electrical part of it. After quoting the price of the electric cable the we need to run underground between the house and meter box, we realized that we do not have enough money in the current budget to do everything. So, scrap that idea.

We already bought the siding, so the money in our budget is now going to the siding rpoject. Once the siding is done, we'll save up the money to run the utilities. This will probably mean that our goal to move in before November may have to be pushed until next year.

So we started prepping the outside to accept the siding. The first step was to seal the gap between the main floor wood framing and the ICF basement wall with some foam. Then after the foam cured, Shawn went around with this neat little saw to cut the foam flush with the wall. In this picture you can see the housewrap (white) and the foam sheathing on the first floor (under the white). The orange is the polyurethane foam sealing the gap.

The Tyvek housewrap is an air-infiltration barrier that allows vapor to pass through. It also serves the purpose of a drainage plain so that if water gets behind the siding, is will slide down the Tyvek and drain to the exterior helping to keep the moisture out of the walls. This is why the flashing on the windows was very important, and it needs to be integrated with the housewrap so that they all work together as a system to reduce the potential water damage. It is impossible to completely seal a house against water intrusion. Which is why the flashing and drainage plane are designed so that if water does get in there, it has a way to get out, instead of becoming trapped and entering the house. The ICF in itself is a drainage plane, so it does not need to have Tyvek on it.

I do not like the fact that the Tyvek ends right at the joint between the framing and the basement wall. So as an extra measure of protection, we decided to add a couple more feet of Tyvek to cover that joint. Also, the windows located in the walkout basement are flashed to kingdom-come. Still, we are being overtly cautious, and decided to cover the window buck with Tyvek that is slipped under the Tyvek of the main floor. Hopefully the water will drain over the Tyvek and not have a chance to find a crack between the wood buck and the basement wall.

To begin prepping the windows, we first need to clean the foam on the wall so that the flashing tape will stick. In this picture you see the window buck (in blue) and the window that has been already installed. The white tape surrounding the window is the flashing tape. We added flashing tape to the joint between the window buck (blue) and the basement ICF foam wall.

That joint between buck and wall was sealed with spray foam, then we cut the foam flush with the wall. You can see here where we used a brush to clean the foam around the buck to reveal the white foam under all that dust. Next, we flashed the joint with flashing tape. This is done in a shingle style, meaning the bottom piece goes first (which was already in place before the windows were installed). Then the vertical sides get flashed, and finally the top horizontal joint gets flashed overlapping the sides. Again, this is so that water running on the surface will drain down. Here you can see me installing the flashing tape on the side joint between buck and wall.

We are using left-over Tyvek housewrap that we have from the carpenter. The first window and the sliding door, we covered it with Tyvek and then we cut out the hole for the window/door. Here you can see Shawn nailing the Tyvek to the ICF. We slid the pieces of Tyvek under the Tyvek that is covering the upstairs, then taped it with some Tyvek tape.

To maximize what little Tyvek we had, we decided to cut two strips for the sides and then cut a horizontal piece for the top overlapped over the sides and using Tyvek tape to seal the joints. The Tyvek is installed using ring shank button nails.

So here is what the progress looks like. The idea here is that if water gets behind the siding, like in wind-driven rain, it will hit the Tyvek and run down over the Tyvek in one continuous plane.

We finished cleaning the foam around the windows, and installing the flashing tape around the bucks for all of the back windows. We don't have enough left over Tyvek to do all of the windows, so we bought a 3 ft x 100 ft roll of Tyvek to finish the windows and to go around the house covering the joint between main floor and basement.

The windows in the window wells will probably be trickier to do, but we'll see. Once this tyveking is done, we will start installing the siding trim.

You cannot imagine the ridiculous amount of time that we have spent searching for the right fastener for the siding. Finally, we settled on stainless steel ring shank nails. So as to not pound every single nail by hand, we bought an air framing nailer. The model that we ordered off Amazon.com that should be arriving next week is the Porter Cable FR350A. My father-in-law will let us borrow his air compressor, bless his heart. No one around here stocks stainless steel nails that are collated to be used with an air gun, so we will have to special order them from Lowes. We need a 3" nail to go through the foam upstairs and nail at least 1 1/4" into the wood framing. For the basement, we will be buying 2 3/8" Stainless steel nails. The foam in the ICF basement is 2 1/2" deep, so we don't want to be hitting the concrete. Shawn is all excited about his new toy... I mean tool.

We will be ordering 4000 of the 3" nails, and probably another 2000 of the 2 3/8". Doesn't sound ridiculous that nails alone will cost 1/5 of the siding materials cost? For the same amount of money, we could have probably gone to the Caribbean for a weekend.

I have also been looking into mount boxes for the outdoor lights and outlets, and decided to buy the ones at Lowes. Since we won't be doing electrical, I needed something that will facilitate the installation of the electrical boxes after the siding is done. These mount boxes make the job look better, and the nice thing is that the mount box covers can be snapped off so that the electrician has access to the wall behind without tearing holes in the siding. Then the covers can be snapped back on once he is done.

Another part of the siding is to cover the exposed ICF basement since the siding has to be installed at least 8 inches away from the ground. We have opted to use PVC coated aluminum flashing, and we are hunting for stainless steel screws to use. I think we will have to make a trip to Menards to get them, since they stock those. Or the other option is to order them online.

It seems like progress is going slow, but at least we have now officially started working on it.

Oh, and guess who thinks our safe room is a safe place to nest? There seems to be a sparrow that flies out of there every time we go in. I guess until we can seal off the eaves, we'll have to deal with birds nesting in the house.

Here's a picture of a nice surprise this spring. In all the years that we've lived here, I've never seen this tree bloom! Shawn has complained about this ugly tree a few times in the last five years, and has made the off-comment that he should chop it down. I've always liked this tree, and I have had a vision of a little bench on a small paved floor under it. I even told Shawn he could not cut it so that the circle drive could go there when we first began to think about building the house. Now I am pleased that we didn't cut it down (though Shawn still thinks it looks a little worse for wear).

Perhaps the old oak that died (and is becoming firewood as you can see) used to take too many nutrients or light from this tree, or something. I was just telling Shawn last week that I'd like to have one of those nice pink flowering trees that have started to bloom around here, and see how God provides?