June 20 - 11 hours of work

We started this morning out by going to Esty's Lumber Yard in Groveland to pick up some rough cut 1"x12" pine boards to replace some of the sheathing that was pieced together on the front left of the house. Over the last few weeks, Rocky has been trying to use as much of the old sheathing as possible to patch the house back together. While he did a good job with the material that he had, you can see in the photo above that it really was a patchwork. Since sheathing is an important element in the structural integrity of the house, we decided that longer runs of 1x12 would help support the house better. In the above photo, I am pulling off the 1790 sheathing.

On new houses it is typical to use plywood or OSB to sheath the house. However, according to the preservation covenant we are required to use 1" rough cut pine to sheath the house. While there seems to be some room for interpretation in the covenant, we felt like adding the OSB on top of the old sheathing might be taking a bit too much liberty with the intention of the preservation document.

Here you can see the new sheathing boards. There is one that goes all the way to the roof and then the other three are beneath the upstairs windows. To make these fit together nicely, we cut them on a 45 degree angle - they fit nicely while still allowing the house to breath. Leigh is taking out any old nails or pounding them in so that they don't rip the Easy Guard house wrap.

Next we wrapped the front of the house in Easy Guard House wrap. This is like Tyvek - it allows the moisture to get out of the house but keeps it from getting in.

Here's the house all wrapped and ready for insulation. Because there are so many gaps in the sheathing, we decided to apply a layer of 1/2" Styrofoam insulation on the exterior of the house.
We will also use spray in insulation to fill the gaps from the inside, trying to make the house as energy efficient as possible.

In this photo you can see the results of 11 hours of work!