Waterproofing

Today was a good day. Our framers didn't end up making it over here until the very end of the day, but even in that short amount of time they got some useful work done which I will show later in this post.

We finally seem to be out of the pattern of rain every day, except for the days when there's LOTS of rain. And you can't have rain when you're trying to put waterproofing membrane onto your walls! So Matt got started right away this morning with putting the nasty black primer on the walls that we thought we could get membrane onto today. (You're only supposed to prime what you can do in a day.) Here's how it looks on one section of the wall.

Next step is to cut the membrane itself to length:

And then peel off the brown paper backing and stick the super sticky stuff onto your primed wall so that when you're done it looks something like this:

And, on the framing side of things, they were able to get the windows more fully framed with headers and sills to the point that he was able to cut out the plywood so the rough openings are actually open! Here's glimpse of what those five windows will offer our lower level:

 And the cat, checking it out. Final grade will be comparable to what is there now, which means we'll need some retaining wall to pull it back from the windows a bit. We plan to salvage limestone from a wall in our neighbor's yard which has been falling down for a number of years. Our house belonged to Matt's grandfather originally, and the one next door to his grandpa's older brother. That limestone wall was built by Matt's dad and his dad's cousin when they were in high school, so it has sentimental value. It's been tough seeing the wall slowly crumbling, but exciting that we'll have the opportunity to re-purpose the rock for our own project.

 One last, less rewarding, task was that Matt pulled OUT all of the drain tile that he had put in. So much silty mud has slid down into the space next to the footings that he wants to get it all shoveled out nice again before he lays the drain tile back down. Now that we're working on the waterproofing (which has to wrap over the edge of the footing), when he puts the drain tile in the next time, we'll be able to cover it appropriately with gravel so it won't need to be messed with again. Still, putting it in a week and a half ago was more than worth it for the amount of water we were able to pump out of the hole instead of carry out bucket by bucket!

Hopefully I'll have more work to update on tomorrow evening!