Finally DONE!!!

This week the final piece was completed on our house - our new house number!  It was special ordered last fall (we thought) to match the Tyndall stone that surrounds it, but for some reason it took forever to get done!  They finished the rest of the stone ages ago, but there was a blank spot for the house number.  I won't post it here because they put our street name on it, and I don't think I want to advertise that on the blog, but here are some photos with a strategically-placed tree :-)
We have also got some new landscaping done, we needed some more trees!

Stucco and Stone

Over the past few weeks, we have got the first coat of stucco as well as our stone.  We are now just waiting for the second coat of stucco, as well as a few minor things like painting the garage door.  We have had plastic over most of our windows (to keep them from getting damaged during the stuccoing) and we are really looking forward to getting that off!  And to getting our air conditioners back!  And to being able to put our new BBQ on our deck!  And to not having construction junk all over our yard!  Hopefully soon!
Here are a few photos of the stone and stucco.  The second coat of stucco will have the colour, so it won't end up looking quite so grey.  The last photo is a close-up of some of the fossils in the stone :-)

Waiting for spring...

Sorry for the long time with no updates!  Not much has really been happening as we are waiting for the weather to warm up so they can stucco the outside of our house.
Over the last few months we have had a few touch-ups (painting, window casings etc.) done on the inside.
In late December we finally got the new hardwood in our family room....which is what kicked off this whole thing....so we are finally starting to feel like we are getting back to normal....

New front door!

The last of the new windows and doors went in yesterday - our new front door!

The big window...

There were two areas of our house that were in particularly bad shape.  One was below the front living room window, and the other (which started this whole reno) was below the huge window in the family room at the back our our house.  The family room window was one giant ~12' x ~15' window.  The engineer and contractor that we spoke to said that large windows like this often cause problems, and recommended breaking it into several smaller windows with bits of wall framed in between them.

Here's the before and after on the inside:

And before and after on the outside:

New envelope and windows!

A lot of work has been going on at our house over the past few weeks.  The new windows are all in, and 3 of the 5 new doors.  We're still waiting for the front door and the small garage door.  The new Typar home wrap is almost complete.  Next will be the installation of the rainscreen and the wire mesh that the stucco will get applied to.  The stucco will have to wait until spring, since the weather is now too cold.  Here are some photos:

Instead of the pink fluff insulation around the window frames, they are using a spray foam insulation, which fills the space more evenly and therefore provides better insulation.  It's the white stuff between the wooden window frame and the drywall:

Windows!

The first of the windows arrived late yesterday, and they are working on installing them.  Here are some photos of the process:

Step 1 - Remove old window

Step 2: add a strip of wood along the bottom to act as a dam, so any water that may get in there will flow outwards, not into the house (this is a back-up as an extra protection against water infiltration)

Step 3: Apply red goop and then membrane on the bottom of the window opening.  The membrane does have an adhesive backing, but they say the red goop helps it stick even better!

How it looks from the outside.  Notice that the grey part is lapping over top of the white part, which will then overlap the rest of the building paper.

The red goop:

Another view of the sill detail, from inside the house:

Step 4: put this stuff along the sides of the window:

Step 5: put a bead of this black caulking type stuff around the window:

Step 6: pop in the new window!

The new window from the inside: