New Siding and Insulation Lesson

With all the electrical and plumbing complete for the time being, we did not need to have the contractors at the house working during the week so I was able to come back to the valley after the holiday.  I was home for a couple of days to catch up with my laundry and pay bills.  It was good to be home in such "luxury" after living in the rough conditions of the Payson house for a few weeks.  Come Friday, we were back on the road to Payson to continue our project.

Craig's crew had removed a siding panel on the north wall behind our master bath tub to get access to some of the plumbing.  This was a panel we were going to replace anyway because it had numerous large holes in it.  While the siding was off, Mike noticed some water along the outside edge of the tub and near the drain pipe.  He found two different problems in the tub which could have been the cause of the leaking.  One was that the down spout was not flush with the tub and was not caulked.  The other was that the seams of the fiberglass enclosure, which should have been caulked when installed, were not sealed and some water was getting through.  Mike tightened the tub spout and added caulk to it and all the tub seams.

Once that was fixed, we were ready to replace the siding.  Since this was on a wall we could not access from the inside (as the bathtub was on the other side of the wall), we had to put the insulation up from the outside.  Since the kraft paper on the insulation is supposed to be on the inside of the house, we had to install these batts backwards and reach INTO the insulation to staple it to the inside wall.  I wanted to try my hand at working with the insulation since I plan to install it during the week when Mike is gone. I took a visit to one of the local thrift stores (there are many in Payson and I know where they all are) to buy some jeans and a long sleeved shirt to make sure I was completely covered.  Insulation is made up of fiberGLASS and it is extremely rough on the skin.  I measured and cut the batts then secured them inside the wall with an electric stapler.  It worked very well.  I hope the rest of the house insulation goes as well.  Mike put up the new siding and we did not damage the flashing this time.

Oh my goodness - a picture of ME working

Covering up all of my good work

While working in the back, we replaced one more piece of siding on the north master bedroom wall.  This is where the A/C wall unit used to be and, even though someone had done a decent job of patching the hole, we thought it was still an eyesore.  The toughest part about replacing this siding piece was that, in order to get it off, we had to remove the trim around the door and house.  Once it was in place, we put all the trim back up and I primed and painted all the new panels, including the ones we replaced on the kitchen last weekend, and touched up the trim.

New siding outside master bedroom

The master bath tub faucet handle broke again (we replaced it once last weekend with one from ReStore) so Mike did a lot of running around trying to find the right one for our faucet (note the high number of home depot trips this weekend).  The super-glued part we were concerned about is still working fine.

Stats:  8 Home Depot trips; 0 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 9/9-9/12: $224
Remodeling expense to date: $22,638