Welcome back to the Fine Homebuilding House in New York. I’m Jon Beer from Jon Beer Contracting. We have gotten a lot done since our last update and I’m here to share all the progress we’ve made since wrapping up mechanicals.

Insulation Installation

We had spray foam installed—a mixture of open- and closed-cell foam. The closed-cell is in all the existing older parts of the house that need to be air-sealed and the open-cell is installed in all the new framing where we were able to do our air-sealing from the exterior.

One priority with this project was creating a very tight house. So in order to get a sense of our airtightness number prior to insulation, we performed a baseline blower-door test: we completed all our air-sealing, sealed off the house, and ran the blower door. We found  that we were at about 4.0 ACH50 to start. Post spray foam, we were able to perform a second blower-door test and bring that number down to 1.8 ACH50. For me, that’s a huge increase in airtightness, which was really exciting to see.

Finishing the Drywall

The really big, exciting update on the interior is the drywall; for the first time in about three years, the inside of the house really looks like a house. For our drywall, we used USG Sheetrock–brand panels. Once the drywall was all hung, we had our taping crew come by. They did a great job; the walls are super smooth and we are just about ready to get our painters in here to start painting.

It’s high summer right now, and super humid. We have a fairly high water table here and we’ve been noticing our basement is a bit damp. Having the HVAC finished, and starting to condition the house, has helped us mitigate that problem. The next step is going to be gutters to help deal with water-shedding off the roof. We hope to get gutters in the next couple of weeks now that we’re wrapping siding.

Now that the drywall is finished, we have started to do the interior trim carpentry on the second floor. We’ve installed our laminate flooring. We’ve installed our doors; we’re starting to do our door casing and baseboard trim. One cool part of the trim carpentry that we’ve started is the staircase; we’ve taken off the construction treads and are starting to glue down our new oak treads with PL Premium Max. We’ve also started the stair trim and are getting prepped for the hardwood flooring repairs and install on the first floor.

Life Update

One of the biggest exciting updates has really nothing to do with the house. My wife and I got married. Since then, we’ve gone on our honeymoon—and now that we’re back, we’re ready to get through the home stretch and finish up this house.

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