House is sealed up.

   It looks like the major changes have slowed down this week, but they installed plywood and doors on the exterior openings that won't have doors until the very end so the house is officially sealed up.  Outside of the odd 70 degree day, normal daytime temperatures are averaging in the high 50s with night time temps getting cold enough to frost the grass in the morning.  We got to visit the house on one of those 70 degree days, but the inside of the house was considerably colder so even with the drafty plywood doors, the ICF and windows are doing their insulation job.

   The copper roof installers got a chance to come back an replace the copper apron flashing on the porch roof where it meets the house.  The result is a much cleaner look and the round section around the turret is properly flashed with long pieces rather than step flashing.

   Here are the garage entry doors to the house.  Both have been sealed, but the storage space has plywood nail in and the mudroom has a functioning door.  There's no door handle or lock on it yet so it's just to block most of the weather from getting in.  These will both be fire rated doors, but we don't have them ordered yet.  A couple of places have bids going and it's a pretty standard door, so nothing fancy going on here.  The temporary door that's installed here is a standard height door and we're getting an eight foot door installed, so you can see how much difference there is between the two.

   The master walkout to the balcony was also sealed up with plywood so no more walking out there unless you go through the window, which I did.  The doors here are on order with Hardwood Bevel and Door, and will be an arch top double french door, which should provide a ton of light to the room.  It's a wood construction with thermopane glass but even still, I have no delusions about the energy efficiency of the door, nor the security.  We can take some measures to make it more secure, but it's definitely a weak point inherent in the design of the door.  The center support, astragal, isn't as strong as a door jamb, but bolting each door into the concrete below helps.  There are also add on door barriers that we can consider to make it kick proof, but considering the entire door is glass, it seems unnecessary.

   The great room door is sealed off since we won't take delivery of this door until the house is near completion.  This is an arch top full thermopane glass door in a wood frame so we don't want any damage to come to it during the construction process.  This door will also be an eight foot door, but we debated a standard height with a transom window.  In the end, we decided to have all exterior doors have an arch top and get rid of the transom window to unify the look with the front and garage doors.  If we want to access the porch here, we can either climb out a window or just walk around from the front.

   The mudroom door is also sealed off but we can access the back porch and gazebo through the sliding glass door in the kitchen.  This door will be an eight foot, arch-top wood door with a four panel design, the top panel holding a thermopane glass to give the mudroom some sunlight.  If we didn't have this glass, the mudroom would be too dark since there aren't windows in this room.  The design of this door is shared with the garage entrance door to the back yard, minus the glass.

   Here's the current state of the garage.  There's still plenty of lumber left, but not a ton of tasks.  The arches need to be installed between the porch posts, but we still need to nail down the design of the posts before we can install those.  There's a little left to do in the gazebo, but not too much.  There's one more nook to install in the foyer, but I think that's it for the interior rough carpentry.  It's nice to see the materials kept in an organized fashion in a central place rather than all over the job site, getting wet.  The crew cleaned up the interior pretty well and the dumpster is just about full.

   As I mentioned, the Copper Roof guys came back to replace the apron flashing around the house.  The step flashing is integrated in with the shingles, so replacing that would be difficult and costly, but since the apron flashing just sits on the roof surface, that was more replaceable and visible.  Also, a poor installation could really affect the longevity of the roof if any driving rain got up in there.  As per the high quality of their work, they solder all the joints, but another important difference between their install and the original roofer is that the copper up the wall is much tighter and attached to the wall.  They also used a better caulking compound to cover the nails used to nail the copper to the roof.  Sorry for the slightly blurry photo.  Still calibrating my auto-focus.

   Here's how they soldered the inside corner.  It might look messy, but that solder joint will expand and contract at the same rate as the copper so mechanical detachment isn't as probable as using a caulking compound.  OF course the mechanical solder joint isn't as strong as welding, but you're not going to weld copper on a house.  Solder is probably the best you'll get, with the roof on many historical buildings lasting hundreds of years.

   The other great thing about the replacement copper is that they used much longer lengths than the 6-8 foot pieces the original installation used.  This makes for fewer seams along the length and a cleaner look.  The bending of the copper performed better so the edges look crisp and all aligned.  The soldering makes a flatter seam vs the dark color of the caulking compound so the seams all but disappear when viewed from a distance.  While you can still see the caulk used to cover and water proof the nails, it's much more minimal and only on the edge of the flashing.

   Here's how they overlap and solder the outside corners.  They had to install this after the trim, but managed to tuck it up under the trim with mostly minimal impact.  I'm not sure if this damage was caused during trim installation or during the copper retrofit, but it will have to be repaired.  I'll have to take a closer look to see how much they overlapped the copper on the corner, but the solder is on a mitered joint, so one might be square and one mitered.  The bevels are matched up nicely and the nails are minimal.

   Here's a closer look at how the cover the nails.  First, you can get a good look at the bevel that was bent into the copper.  The previous installation just rolled the edge over so every nail caused a slight dimple in the metal, which became very visible from a distance since the dimple reflected light differently.  Second, the nails are now installed near the edge of the copper rather than in the face of it, which allows a more blended look to the asphalt shingle.  I think they actually mixed in some of the asphalt aggregate into the joint compound to further conceal the nail heads.  These little details make a huge difference when viewed from a distance.  While you might not be able to cite exactly why one looks better than the other, you just get a feeling that the overall installation is better.

   Besides replacing all the apron flashing, they also wrapped the balcony column where it meets the roof.  When it's completed, there will be a column wrapped on this 6x6 post, but this is a nice touch that will prevent any water from infiltrating to the wood roof decking.  Any finishing material we put on the sloping side will sit on top of this flashing so all water will hit this and shed off rather than getting to the post base.  This is great because they basically went around while they were installing the apron and said "Hey look, we should probably do this too just in case."  That's the difference between a laborer and a professional.

   Here's the inside corner against the master balcony.  The step flashing was installed by the previous roofer and the apron flashing is new.  A couple of interesting things about this picture.  First, the way the solder attaches the new copper against the old.  You're taking a edge and soldering it against a face, so I'm guessing there's a little tab on the new copper so the two pieces have some surface to solder.  The other interesting thing here is how the ICF reacts to the heat of the soldering.  I'm sure they used some kind of heat shielding when they solder up against flammable materials.  On the balcony post, the wood is a little singed.  The ICF is a little melted away here, but it's well contained to just above the solder joint.  This tells me the flame retardant in the foam works well should something catastrophic happen.  Also the foam is slightly melted, not burned, so the foam itself isn't flammable.

   Here's a shot of the master balcony post flashing as it wraps around under the deck.  A really nice touch since the deck boards won't stop water, and water could infiltrate the end of the post, especially since it's near the edge of the roof above.  The end grain on a post is particularly vulnerable to water damage and rot since the wood structure naturally absorbs water from the end grain.  Even though this post is pressure treated against rot, given enough time and moisture, this would break down.  This copper will help prevent water infiltration to the end grain.

   A major sticking point with the first roof installers is that they used zinc plated nails in the copper.  With all the nail's already covered, I would only be able to assume that correct nails were used in this installation, but here's the truth.  Copper nails were used, which is better than stainless nails, and way better than zinc galvanized nails.  Of course I would expect no less from the copper roof installers, but it's nice to get confirmation about the correct installation.

   And here's what the copper nails look like.  There were only a couple scattered around the build but at least I get to hold one in my hands.  They're not that much more expensive than zinc plated galvanized, so these should have been used everywhere, but the old roofer just didn't think they were necessary, even after I brought them to his attention.  Make no mistake, this is the only way to go with a copper installation.  Time will tell if the other copper fails on the house.

   I'm not sure if I got a shot of this on one of the previous updates, but this is how the gazebo beams are boxed in, with reference to the rest of the back porch.  The ceiling height of the back porch is higher than the beam of the gazebo, so the beams define the gazebo area a bit, from the rest of the porch.  I think it makes for a nice architectural detail on the ceiling.

   The construction furnace is hooked up and running so we have heat in the building.  As expected, it's not connected to duct work so we'll need to rely on convection to circulate the heat throughout the house.  The basement stairwell isn't open completely so the heat can't circulate up, but the basement was much warming than the floors above.  The house should insulate well enough so that the heater should need to burn much gas.  This will be the only gas furnace installed in this house.

   Here's where the gas comes into the house.  We've had the gas line pulled to the house ever since the electricity was pulled, but it didn't enter the house.  The yellow gas line is temporary and it's only connected to the furnace.  Eventually, black gas pipe will be connected here and run to where it's needed.  It's a little hard to make out, but there's a 90 degree elbow in the black pipe to which the yellow line is attached.

   Here's how the gas furnace is vented out of the house.  Just a duct going out a hole in the plywood.  Good enough for construction purposes and it does the job.  Even with the deck in place outside, there's over ten feet of clearance underneath, so we shouldn't have to worry about stagnating gas by products.

   We have a meeting on Tuesday with Mike and Margaret, to nail down some of the finishing details at the house.  We purchased some polyurethane corbels we plan on installing on the exterior, so we just need to figure out where and how many we'll need, before they install the siding.  I'm not sure where we're going from here until we get the bank signed on, but hopefully that will take place this month so we can really start to build again.