We are on week 7 of installing new windows and re-siding of our South Berkeley house. I'm taking on the role of Owner / Builder and feeling the pressure of both client and builder simultaneously. It's lovely to get exactly what you want, but equally painful to leave well enough alone when things don't go exactly as anticipated.
The Scope of Work
Remove and replace the windows throughout the house. Our windows were originally double hung wood sash windows. Later the sash was replaced by a nice salesman from Sears, or Montgomery Ward, who installed retrofit aluminum double hungs in 1971. These of course were single pane glass - cold, damp and drafty. Additionally, the original jambs had been rotting for many years and the entire window unit needed to be removed and replaced before the rot infected the house framing.
On top of the windows, we also chose to replace our existing exterior siding. Our house originally consisted of a '3 Lap' 1x8 redwood drop siding, with a handful of trim details at the usual locations. Unfortunately the same decision maker who bought the Sears Windows also decided to stucco over all of the original redwood siding. Restoring the original look of it, sadly, means removing all the siding entirely and replacing it with contemporary materials. The benefits of having the house down to the studs, however, have offered one small comfort - new sheathing.
With the siding out of the way and the structural wood frame exposed, we have an opportunity to seismically strengthen the entire house framing system. With our budget being finite, and having already braced and bolted our existing foundation, we chose to stiffen the house by sheathing the entire exterior wall from foundation to roof eave with 1/2" structural plywood. The sheathing greatly improves the lateral shear of the house frame and genuinely helps me sleep at night.
On top of the sheathing, we installed a new drainage plane, or house wrap. In our case we used TyVek, a proprietary product of DuPont. This is a thin, durable and critical membrane that keeps water (rain) from entering the wood framing, while simultaneously allowing internal water vapor out. Moisture from new wood building materials can damage the new wood when not allowed to be properly vented. More importantly, water vapor from human occupancy also must be permitted to migrate through building assemblies should it find its way into the wood framing system. TyVek does just that - it blocks water in a liquid state, while allowing water in a vapor state to pass freely.
While we were at it, we demolished our unreinforced brick chimney and living room fireplace. This was a hard decision, as there were plenty of pros and cons for doing so. In the keep-it-camp, once gone, our wood burning firebox would never be allowed back, at least not legally. Additionally, gas fireplaces really don't have the charm of real wood. But the get-rid-of-it-camp won out. The reasons for removal of the original fireplace and chimney were multiple. First, the chimney was a major seismic liability. As we demo'd the brick, we were astounded to discover the lack of any tie-in to the framing. Here we were, blissfully ignoring this 35' tower of brick death. Additionally, the carbon emissions from burning wood just don't add up anymore no matter how nostalgic the fuel source. We in the Bay Area have been facing a series of wildfires in recent years. As a consequence, the weeks of smoke in the air, gasp as you breath, air quality have taken the shine off of the pleasure of smelling a wood fire. So, in the end, we removed it. Hopefully in the near future, after we've licked our financial wounds, we will go back and install a gas fireplace. The interior of the living room has suffered a design setback with the loss of the hearth and I hope we have the opportunity to correct the loss.
The Coming Weeks Ahead
The strategy of the work thus far has been to handle one face at a time, as we only own enough scaffold to cover one side of the house. This is clearly inefficient. The cost of renting scaffold to completely envelop the house was not crazy, but its hard to pay for something you already own, and unfortunately renting 3/4 a house of scaffold is about as costly as renting 4/4. Erecting scaffold, moving scaffold and re-erecting scaffold, however is a huge pain, so I'm somewhat sad about this particular decision. Despite the scaffold, things are moving along nicely, and we will be finishing the front elevation tomorrow. Painting is coming soon and we have hired Angelisse Karol Color and Design to help with the color selection. She has been fantastic to work with. I'm pretty sure it was the best consultant money I've spent in several years.
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