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:



Busy week ahead...

There hasn't been a ton of progress on our house during the past week, as we are waiting for the windows to come in.  They have done a bit of the building envelope, particularly in areas where there are no windows to deal with.  The first of the new windows will arrive tomorrow (Tuesday) and then they have a busy week planned installing the windows!  Hopefully the good weather holds...

Progress!

It has been almost 2 weeks since work started on our house.  Not much has got done in the last 2 days due to the rainy weather, but they were making good progress before that!
All the stucco and building paper is off, so we could clearly see all the problem areas.  The worst areas are the big back family room window, which we already knew about; the front living room window, which we suspected; and the chimney, which was a bit of a surprise.
There is mould and rot starting in several other areas, but the really bad areas are pretty much where we suspected.  However, the building paper was done incorrectly around every single window!  If we hadn't caught this now, it would have just got worse and worse.
They have replaced plywood and some 2 x 6 studs in the worst areas.
They have also done the new window membranes on several windows, although we are still waiting for our new windows to arrive.  I'll post some pictures of this process later once I actually remember to take some :-)
The new shingles are on the roof - thankfully just before this rain started!
Our house is wrapped in plastic now to keep the rain out while they work on it...

Rot on the chimney

Back of the house

Front of the house

Cool photo my dad took of our house from across the ravine.

Fixing the rotten area under the front window (photo also by my dad).

Meeting with our MLA

We had a meeting at our house today with our MLA.  He was definitely very sympathetic, as well as shocked at the extent of damage and the cost of repairs.  Our contractor was also able to talk to him about how they have been seeing similar problems with many other houses.  Of course, the government can't really do much to help us personally, but perhaps they can work to change the regulations to help prevent this from happening to others in the future.

Construction started!

They started construction on our house today!  It will be good to get it done.  So far they have removed the stucco and building paper on most of the front of our house.  So far NONE of the windows have been done correctly.  There is nasty water damage and mould under our front living room windows - the plywood sheathing is rotting away.  It doesn't look too bad under daughter #1's bedroom windows (above garage) although the paper was lapped incorrectly there also.

Start of construction - the big blue bin on the driveway!

Rot and mould under the front living room window - definitely going to have to replace some plywood here.

Daughter #1s bedroom windows - building paper lapped WRONG!!!

Below living room window - building paper lapped WRONG!!!

The contractor gave us some spray paint and told us to "decorate" our house!

Our family :-)

Sign up

Our house backs onto a pathway where a lot of people walk.  Since some of our stucco is off and our Tyvek is showing, we have seen a lot of people look (and even point!) at our house.  So we decided to put up a sign, with a link to this blog, so people know what is going on. 

Construction on our house is likely going to start the 3rd week of September, so I'm sure people will be wondering even more what we are doing!

Insurance changes?

We got our annual home insurance renewal this week.  It had some interesting changes:

This makes it sound like the insurance industry has some studies that show there are a significant number of homes with "latent or hidden defects" or "faulty workmanship".  It sounds to me like they are (at least partially) referring to errors that home builders make.  Insurance is not covering a lot of our repairs, but now it sounds like they won't cover anything for issues like this (although it shouldn't really be an issue for us, since we already have our claim in). 

Of course "proper and regular maintenance" is not really possible for a building envelope that is inaccessible below a home's stucco!  It's impossible to even know what your issue is until you start tearing your home apart!