I certainly need to make a point of posting more frequently, but I’ve been somewhat busy these past few weeks. I suppose that’s a lame excuse, but I figured “my dog ate it” wouldn’t exactly fly…
It didn’t take much time for the installers to mud, tape and sand all of the seams. I wish I had my camera on hand during a few visits to the house because the guys mudding were walking around on stilts. I’m pretty sure it would have made for a decent photo or two.
With the walls fully prepared, it was time for paint. It’s quite surprising how much larger the spaces feel now that walls are primed – particularly the clerestory, which obviously gets the most amount of light. Of course, the white walls also allow you to easily see the imperfections… which is a good thing because it gives us the opportunity to correct them now.
With a pencil in hand, we walked around the entire house and circled all of the flaws. Anything that needed to be sanded, filled, or repaired in any way was marked for the drywall guys to come back and correct before we start painting. For the most part, everything was in pretty good shape… although the clerestory walls need a little love, which isn’t all that surprising given the difficulties everyone has had working in that space. Apparently it’s a pain in the ass to work in an area 23’ tall. Shocking, I know.
I’ve always been curious if you would you do the celestory again if you could do it all over again.
It seems like it will result in a lot of heat loss in the winter (unless you have super-high R-value windows, which you don’t. What are they R-3 to R-6 or so?) and and cause a lot of heat gain in the summer sticking up there with windows on all four sides. The main feature of it appears to be the windows and the benefit of them is that they let sunlight in, but that could have been done with skylights, which would have been less expensive than all those windows. Also, they would have been easier to install than building that entire celestory and installing all the windows, not to mention way less maintenance to just have one flat roof with skylights in it.
Honestly. This must be the SLOWEST build ever.
I’ve done something similar and if it had taken this long I would have considered it a failure.
Scott,
Building a box with no windows would also save alot in cost, maintenance and heat loss/gain, but then you would be living in a box with no windows.
Ryan,
Wasn’t suggesting something so ludicrous of course. Just the way the light is being let in…
David
What about the outside. It is starting to look a WWII site.
You are making good progress with the start of the painting phase.
We need another video. How about a “walk-through” to show the completion stages.
Keep going
Gee Marg,
You sound like you’re fun to be around… Building a house takes time.
Great job on the project. Things are coming along nicely.
Dan
Howdy Y’all – Indeed, the build is moving slower than I’d like… but what can you do? So long as it’s done correctly, I don’t mind a few delays.
As for the clerestory, we’d absolutely do it again. Granted, we haven’t moved into the house yet… so ask me again later. But it’s such an integral part of the design, I couldn’t imagine it not being there. It’s not just about the amount of light, but just the general openness of it all. Sure, there will be heat loss up there, but we’ll have a fan up there that’ll help circulate it (or so I hope). 2 of the windows also open, which will allow us to vent the heat in the summer months.
As for the exterior – the materials have been ordered and we’ll be starting on the cladding soon. Hopefully it’ll look a little less WWII