100 Days

So tomorrow morning will be the 100th day of the renovation of our home that will be 100 years old probably some time this year.  I'm not an elementary school teacher, so unfortunately I don't have 100 awesome collections of 100 things to commemorate the milestone (I really regret that I don't.  It would be super fun to have counted every nail and 2x4 and cubic foot of concrete that's built the house so far and be able to whip out those figures now.  Alas.). It is still fun to take this occasion to see what can be accomplished in that period of time and look forward to what comes next, perhaps with the aid of an aptly celebratory cocktail (I suggest a Porch Swing), because tomorrow is also my birthday.

Seeing this house is an even better birthday present than a porch swing (or Mario Kart 8, which is my actual present, and really great one, at that).

Somehow, this week they have finished the roof, shingles and all, put in most of the windows, and made a lot of progress on the siding.

I'm returning to poetry looking at all these beautiful shingles.  I had no idea a roof was such a lovely thing.

I can't get over how beautiful the details are.  The rakes (new term for me--those are the boards that stick out like they're the rafters from the roof) are weather treated so they don't rot in our million-percent humidity, and the fascia has been put in to show those beautiful grooves.  

Here's my breakfast nook.

I always wanted a house with old, wavy-glass windows, but unfortunately in our house someone had replaced the original windows with "modern" aluminum single pane windows.  That turns out to be a blessing in disguise, because now we're replacing the old windows as well as adding new ones, and these are all double-pane, energy efficient, bells-and-whistles, what-have you.  They're pretty.

Here's my library again.  The windows make it, don't they?

 The siding going on has made me learn about two things this week.  I like the siding of my old house, and that profile, with the curved edge, is called 117.  It's only made from wood, and it's more expensive than ordinary clapboards.  The siding that builders really like these days, at least in Houston, is Hardie-plank, which is some kind of magical cement board that's impervious to rot and the termites that run rampant in my neighborhood, but I've always thought it's pretty boring, at best, and maybe straight-up homely.  So when deciding how to side our house, I had to decide between being practical and indulging in beauty, and though we went the practical route, I was a little sad about the loss of beauty.  Until I saw this siding.  It's so pretty, you guys.  Somehow, the proportion of how they're installing it is really nice and I don't mind a bit that it doesn't have that little curved edge.  And they're putting in all of these lovely details like that little lip in the picture above that separates the bottom board (whatever it's called) from the siding itself, and it's got such a nice little angle to it that I could just sing about it.  You're fortunate that next comes electrical and plumbing rough-ins, because surely not even I can wax rhapsodic about wires and pipes.

The other thing I learned this week from my house with the help of the Internet was that tar-paper is a thing, still, and it's a good thing.  If you know all about house-wraps, or don't care, please feel free to skip the next paragraph about my learning process.

I drove by the house this week, waving to the workers who think I'm totally nuts for driving by three times a day, and I kept wondering when the big sheets of Tyvek were going to go up.  I've been driving by new-construction houses as a hobby for most of my life, and I can't remember ever before noticing a house that didn't get some color or brand of house wrap before the siding or brick went up.  Of course you can always tell because every inch of that stuff is branded.  When they tacked some plain, black, unbranded tar-paper to the sheathing, I figured it was a preliminary step, and when they started installing the siding on top of that without ever putting any of the ubiquitous Tyvek up, I had to do some concerned Googling. It turns out that Tyvek and other house wraps are like Gore-Tex, and for most situations, they're the best high-tech solution, as well as being quick and easy to install because they come in big sheets.  House wraps let no water in, but let water vapor out, so your house stays dry but doesn't get moldy.  However, in super-wet, super-hot places like Houston, the bright sunlight can shine on saturated siding and actually drive water vapor from the outside in, so that water condenses inside your walls and turns everything into moldy goo, more or less.  Yet again, Houston, home of the anomaly.  Tar paper is kind of like your wool socks--it is mostly waterproof, but in extreme conditions, if it gets wet it wicks the moisture into itself and allows it to evaporate slowly.  So I'm not going to get water-bubbles inside my walls.  Thanks, random message boards, for explaining this to me.

Happy 100 days, everyone!  Lift your porch swings or sweet teas with me to the 100-or-so more that remain.