Living life in Vancity: Foundations of life

So a short break on the blog post, while a new part of my life began this past week: fatherhood. A pretty amazing experience all in all - one of the most emotionally intensive weeks of my life in which there were tears, relief, fear, happiness, worry, helplessness, and many other things experienced in a matter of hours. But, at the end of it all, I have a new family, which is a really neat feeling. My baby boy's name's Bevyn (though all of you will likely know that on here) and while he's a little less than interactive at this point (eat, sleep, poop, pee, cuddle, repeat), there are still special moments in which you can see him taking in the world anew. The innocence is pretty amazing to witness. And now to build him a house to call home.

That's my boy!

So...this week was the starting of our walls. We have put down our sill plates with a gasket and a bead of mastic that will go down the inside of the wall to create an air barrier. The wood we are using is Canfor and should be FSC, but I have yet to get the COC # which is making me nervous. The plan right now to handle the exterior of the ICFs is to use a peel and stick membrane (to waterproof it) and then a dimple board with a cloth filter to basically create a "foundation rainscreen" that allows water to drain down to the draintile below. We'll then cover (or "parge") that dimple board in a concrete facade to protect it from damage where it is exposed above grade. Protecting the ICFs is pretty important and has been illustrated through the damage they've had already. The ICF's have taken a bit of a beating during installation as have the Fastfoots (Fastfeet?) but the workers have agreed to fix the damages (and help address the insulation/waterproofing that's been compromised).

In addition, we've sorted the new windows and dimensions so we can order the second batch of windows (thankfully) soon and hopefully they'll be set in the next 6 weeks or so. Cascadia have been fantastic thus far in providing pretty amazing customer service throughout this project. Hopefully we've sorted out some of the tricky attachments where the doors are flush with the ground (where we're trying to do a seamless indoor-outdoor look)...more complicated than you would think!

Last but not least, the rep from Prosoco came up for another visit and demonstrated two of the RGuard Products that I'm planning on using. It was pretty slick stuff and I'm keen to give it a whirl. It's going to be more expensive, but I think it will likely be one of the better investments in the house and I'll hopefully save on labour costs since I'll be doing much of it myself.