Thursday, September 24, 2009

Day 87 and 88: More plaster preparation and drywall

I worked late again Wednesday. We did the same things as Tuesday, so that's my excuse for skipping a post. On Thursday, Trevor and I continued to prepare the walls for plastering while a crew installed drywall on the ceiling and interior walls. Here is a pic taken from the loft.

It is nice to see smooth clean surfaces replace the view of joists and insulation. About 6-1/2 inches of the curved glulam beams remains exposed. Thanks for reading. I appreciate your comments.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi mike and cindy great to see your project progressing; will there be a coal-fired power generating plant in the back yard? just wondering

Mike said...

Not that I know of, but there will be a 5kW solar power generating plant on the roof.

Mike

Helen said...

Hi Mike
I just came across your blog this afternoon after doing a Google for Apex block R-value!
We are building in LA county and are almost set on using Apex. I was wondering why you chose this product over Rastra?
Helen

Mike said...

Thanks for your question Helen! I chose Apex over Rastra for the following reasons:

Better surface for plastering than Rastra.

100% recycled styrofoam versus 85% for Rastra.

I liked the concept of interlocking notches.

My contractor was interested in trying something new. He built with Rastra before, but not APEX.

The only flaw with the Apex block is that there is no corner element like Rastra. It is labor intensive to construct corners on the job site. Overall, I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Good luck with your project, and thanks for reading.

Mike

Helen said...

Mike,
Thanks for your speedy response.
I'm so glad I found your blog. Your house looks great and we seem to have similar priorities. I'm just about to start reading your earlier posts and I'm sure I'll gather a lot of information.
One of the reasons I became interested in the composite ICFs was because you can plaster directly onto it, so it's good to know that Apex has a better surface to do that.
Another reason why I started looking into Apex was that it has a current ICC, although I just found out today that it is only good for seismic zones 0-2. Did you have any trouble getting permits?