Textured Walls and Stucco Prep

With the wall insulation job complete, we are expecting the delivery of a lot of drywall. Jeff said he expected it by the end of the day on Thursday, the 16th, but I as yet, I haven't seen anything of it.

I did have a discussion about wall texture for the interior with Brian. He suggested that the popular texture these days was "holy smooth". Well, of course! How can you resist something that is holy for the walls of your new house?!

Holy Smooth (Que organ fanfare)

I verified that he said "holy" and not " "wholly", meaning the opposite of  "partially". No, he said, he meant holy. However, he meant hole-y (full of holes) which doesn't sound as positive for walls.

Hole-y Smooth

Recognizing that it is just the wall finish and not really meant to make holes in the walls themselves, I said I would accept his recommendation.  But I do want to be on hand the day they begin the texturing.
Hole-y or holy?  I'll decide when I see it.

Rulon was on site Thursday working on the outside of the walls. He will be applying the stucco.

The black asphalt felt paper goes up over the wood sheathing and then wire lath (I call it chicken wire even though I've never seen it used for chickens) is stapled over the felt. Where the staples are close to an edge of the felt, he caulked the staples. This step, called "wrapping the house" is what I saw on Thursday. No one was there on Friday.

Once they finish wrapping the house, it will be inspected and then they will apply the base coat, called "scratch". This binds to the lath but I found out that the wire serves another purpose and that is to allow draining behind the stucco. Even when finished, the stucco is porous and water can soak in. The asphalt felt is waterproof and the wire allows accumulated moisture to drain away.

After the scratch coat comes the "brown coat" and then the finish coat, which will have our chosen color and texture. In all, the stucco layers will be about an inch thick, not as thick as the brick but thicker than I originally thought it would be.

Jeff asked if we were interested in installing EIFS before the stucco. EIFS stands for Exterior Insulating Foam System. Sheets that look sort of like styrofoam go between the asphalt felt wrap and the wire lath. R value is the measure of how well something slows heat transfer. He said it would add 4.5 to the R value of our walls, bringing them to about R-30. It sounded like a good idea until we heard the cost of including it. Steve calculated it would take about 30 years to break even with heating and cooling savings. He admitted he had to use a lot of wild guesses for the calculation (the future cost of fuel as well as the utility bills for the new house with or without it) but we were convinced that it was past the point of diminishing returns. I think we'll be okay with R-25 walls.

By the way, the bricklayers finished their work!