The North Wall Insulation

Karen is striking a pose with the stapler. It looks like she's singing to it, but I think she's trying to blow the smoke away.... She and Chris were putting up the house wrap one evening this week, and made good time on the North wall. We're about out of the wrap, actually, so we're being very careful about every little scrap.

Here's Chris, working in nearly the same spot.Andy and Mindy are putting up the insulation on the North wall. The house wrap isn't quite finished on this wall - the roof is on the ground underneath that patch of bare wall, and until we move it, we won't be able to put the ladder directly below the peak. We ended up laying the insulation in both directions. Sometimes horizontal, sometimes vertical, depending on what fit best or what would result in the least amount of cutting.
We had a nice surprise this week when the windows and doors showed up. It's great to see them stacked in the dining room, just waiting to go in. It makes us eager to hurry up and put them all in soon! The first thing we did when we saw them was to measure their dimensions, then compare it to the frames we've built into the walls... pheew... they match.
This is how we handled the intersection between the walls and the roof. Procedurally, we overhung the roof insulation, then trimmed it vertical after it was installed. Then we installed the wall foam, letting it protrude above the roof pitch. Lastly, we trimmed the wall foam to match the pitch of the roof and line up with the foam already there. This corner came out particularly well, and we're pleased with how it feels. It's nice to see how things go together in a house and know that we'll be plenty warm next winter.
Just for fun, we unwrapped one of the kitchen windows and put it in place. We aren't quite ready to install it, but that will come soon enough. We will need a few tubes of caulk, and then these two windows can be installed. We need to finish the framing around the rest of the windows before they'll be ready, too.

Saturday afternoon, and everybody was out at the house. Karen and Mindy worked on filling cracks and seams, the boys picked up scraps and cleaned up the house site a bit, and Andy and Chris kept working on the North wall foam. The pieces were fun to put together - kind of like really big tangrams.
The shot from the cherry tree... except for a few fiddly bits around the door frame and the windows, the North, East, and West walls are complete. The South wall has yet to be started, and with all those windows, that may prove to be the most challenging wall yet.
While we aren't quite ready to move into the house, somebody is! We found this in our basement last week. One day it was a few twigs and strings, and a few days later, it's a beautiful nest, complete with mud and moss. We felt bad about moving it and making the birds start over somewhere else, but our basement is just not the place for them... they'll make a new nest in no time at all.