Insulation and Drywall

We’ve seen some more progress at the house lately, and we’re excited to show you where things are at!

After rough-ins were completed we had to get a rough inspection done by the county. We got our green tag (passed the inspection), so we were able to move on to insulation and drywall.

First up was insulation. Just like with the rough trades, we walked the house with the insulator and went over everything we wanted. You can choose between spray foam insulation, blown-in, or batts. You can also do a combination of these choices. So here’s what we went with.

In our vaulted ceilings, we chose to do 2” of spray foam and then fill the rest of the cavity with blown insulation. We will have the most energy loss with these ceilings, so we wanted to make sure they were insulated tightly. In all exterior walls we chose to do blown-in. This option gets you a great insulation value while saving a little bit of money over spray foam. Then we chose some interior walls to put batts in for extra noise reduction throughout the house. Some of the areas we chose to do the batts were around Colin’s office, between the extra bedrooms and the main living area, and around bathrooms. They will blow insulation in the attic spaces as well.

Then there’s the basement. We also went with batts here, and then they covered them with a plastic sheathing. We are not finishing the basement right now, but our framer did frame out the outside walls against the foundation. This makes it easier to insulate, and saves us a little bit of work when we do decide to finish the basement. We also asked the insulators to put batts in the ceiling where any radiant flooring is. The radiant tubes are installed in the ceiling of the basement so they are under the subfloor of the main level. They are exposed to the basement, so it’s a good idea to throw some insulation under the tubes so all the heat will actually do what it’s supposed to and heat up the floors, not be lost in your basement.

After the insulation was complete we had to get another inspection done. We got our green tag and were ready to move on to drywall!

We did not do a walkthrough with the drywallers. They are able to just work off the blueprints. We did have to let them know whether we planned to put trim around our windows or if we wanted them to be drywall wrapped. Drywall wrapped means there will be no wood trim on any sides of the windows. It seems to be most popular these days to do a 3-side drywall wrap with a window sill at the bottom. We thought about doing this, but ultimately decided to go all drywall wrapped because we felt it was a cleaner look and fit the modern style better.

First they come to the house to prep. They will put plastic coverings on all the windows and doors, they have covers to put in the floor vents (you don’t want drywall dust getting in your furnace), and they mark on the floor where any outlets, switches, can lights, and other holes in the wall should be (return air vents, etc.). Once prepped, they get all the drywall hung before they do any mudding, taping, and sanding. Wow, do these guys work quickly! The drywall was completely hung before we knew it. While they were getting started on hanging, our tile installer came by to install Kerdi-board in all the bathroom showers. This board is part of the Schluter System of products. It is basically a waterproof drywall board that goes up in showers instead of regular drywall. You can see what is the Kerdi-board because it’s bright orange 😆. Once everything was up the mudding, taping, and sanding did take some more time, but that is normal because they want to make sure the finish is nice and smooth.

Overall the drywall process moved quicker than we expected. This is a huge and exciting step for us because now we get to move on to finishing work! We’ll get our walls primed by the painter, see cabinets and flooring installed soon, then trim work, painting, etc. The house should be pretty busy over the next few months, and we are counting down the days until we get to live in our dream home. Stay tuned for all the fun updates to come!