week 20: stuck on stucco!

The big news this week: Stucco is getting stuck on!

stuck on stucco

A big pile of sand showed up early last week, and I wondered "What's that for?" Now I know: It's for stucco! I happened upon the stuccoteers just starting at lunch earlier this week:

By this weekend this first coat of an eventual three had dried to a pleasant light grey. It was nice seeing the place brighten up a bit after being clad in that dark paper for so long.

They're not completely done around the house with the first coat, but they're close. I imagine the second coat will be going up soon. The stucco man was proud that he allows each coat to completely dry between each application. Apparently that doesn't always happen...

shower floored

The tile guy showed up to begin the process of building the shower floor. He first poured an inch or so of concrete to build the floor up to the bottom of the drain:

And then, after that dried, he built the bench and sealed the floor with fiberglass. Holy cow does that stuff smell nasty! You could smell it from the street!

When I saw that the fiberglass had gone in without the linear drain installed, I thought "They plum forgot about the linear drain!" But after researching shower installation at Fine Homebuilding (you have to be a subscriber [well worth it, btw] to see the article...), I see that I'm wrong:

In our case, the fiberglass is the membrane which is sloped and directed toward the weepholes in the base of the drain. The tile, which goes on top of the mud base, directs most of the shower water to the drain. But the grout between tile is somewhat permeable to water (as may the tile themselves), so all this membrane business is to allow water that seeps through the grout (and tiles) to eventually work its way to the drain weep holes (not good to have water sitting down there, especially if it's in contact with wood or, even worse, on the second story of your house). That mud base for the tile is itself designed to be permeable to water.

Learn something new every day...

new fans (some centered!)

In earlier posts I lamented about the wrong ventilation fans getting installed and the fan being majorly off center in the powder pooper. Well, not only did the wrong fans get installed, but several were installed with lights and heaters when we only wanted ventilation. Those extra features created some electrical problems and thus the opportunity to switch them out with the ones we originally wanted. Hip hip hurray! Furthermore, after deciding that it was going to eat me up every time I saw it in the future, I asked that they move the (non-loading bearing) ceiling joist to center the fan in the ceiling of the powder room. And it is done.

The right fan (and it's centered!).

drywall is here

The drywall for the ceilings and walls is now sitting in the various rooms about the house, waiting for the final inspections and insulation before installation. Once the drywall starts going up, we'll really get a feel for the final feel of the rooms!

ding dong

The doorbell arrived. Kinda swanky! It will (hopefully) have an orangish glow once it's connected (the instruction say that some digital chime boxes don't put out enough power to light the LED...).

off into the sunset...