Well I think I’ve successfully proven that I’m a far more efficient builder than I am a faithful blogger.  It has been more than a month since I’ve updated the progress on the Redmond Residence and I don’t have much of an excuse for my tardiness other than life just got busy and updating the blog seem to always find its way to the bottom of the to-do list.

So as you can imagine, a lot has changed in a month’s time.  Let me rewind a few weeks and we’ll take it from there.

In the last post, we installed the siding on the exterior.  The siding had to be completed prior to insulating the home or we would have to wait to install the siding until after the drywall was installed.  This is because we used sprayed cellulose insulation and without the drywall to hold it in place, hammering on the exterior of the walls has the potential to knock the insulation onto the floor.  In the end, it proved to be a wise decision to install siding first because the house would need to endure a hurricane and the siding sure helped keep us dry.  As a side note, the hurricane didn’t do any damage to the house at all and the basement remained perfectly dry despite not having an operating sump pump (we still have no electricity).

Sprayed cellulose insulation is sprayed densely into the walls and then trimmed to the studs using a roller trimmer.  It provides a consistent R-value from stud to stud, superior air infiltration resistance, fire and mold resistance, and shields the home from exterior noise more than traditional batt insulation.  You can read more about types of insulation and why I like cellulose in this post.

Just prior to installing the insulation, we foam seal the sill plate to the subfloor and in any corners to prevent air infiltration:

We also seal all wire and pipe intrusions:

In this photo, an empty wall chase is plywooded and sealed off at the top to ensure that attic air doesn’t make its way down behind the bedroom walls:

With the insulation installed, it was time to install some drywall.  There isn’t anything particularly unusual about the way we install drywall except that we use screws instead of nails and we use a consistent bead of adhesive at the top of the wall adjacent to the attic which ensures that attic air can’t make its way down that tiny crack between the drywall and top plate of the wall.  In this house, we also used 5/8″ drywall on the second floor ceiling instead of 1/2″ because of the roof trusses…it is an extra measure of precaution to prevent drywall cracks caused by truss uplift.

Following the drywall, we install the trim and interior doors.  This photo shows the baseboard and window trim installed on the study bay window:

Once the trim was installed, we worked in a rather quick manner to get our first coat of paint on the walls and get the kitchen tile installed so that the cabinetry could be set.  Through a family connection in the kitchen business, the Redmond’s supplied and installed their own cabinetry.

Meanwhile, outside we installed the septic system and drilled the well for water:

That pretty much brings us up to date through the early part of this week.  I’ll try not to wait so long before I post again!