leangreen.org recycled renovation on a low-budget ration

Welcome to Phase 5 of the construction process. We are upstairs with drywall! In Phase 1, we lived in the shaky, bug-infested house for three years prior to construction. Right before lifting the house, we moved into a temporary apartment in Oakland. Since Brian worked from home, we used a ladder to get into the house through the elevated front door (at around 10 feet high). Once the slab was poured and the rough framing complete, Tom and Vince built a ramp so that Elbie (our 130-pound Newfoundland) could climb up to our back door to the second floor. When we started demolition of the second floor interior walls and ceiling, we were driven into the dark cavern of the garage where we remained for two years until last week.

First impression of the new space: we like light! We have good views of the neighborhood redwoods from our front windows, but we did not anticipate that the house lift would bring us to the height of all the electric, cable and telephone wires converging at the telephone pole in front of our house. Dom appreciates the squirrels who dance across the high-wire, but we're wondering how we might consolidate the zig-zagging lines. For now, we really appreciate the easy wake-up call by the sunlight in the morning.

Shout it out like Irene Cara cause this feels really good. Houston, we have sheetrock. Thanks to Tom, Rusty and Andreas for all the help.

Over and again we've read complaints that UltraTouch cotton batt insulation is painful to cut. During a test run installation in our garage, we struggled with cutting the batts on the ground with a 2x4 straight edge and resharpening our Leatherman blade.  It was a two-person job.  The cuts were messy. We often resorted to ripping the batts with our hands so when we stuffed the insulation in the wall, the batts didn't always fit perfectly.  If some of the batts were perforated to accommodate non-standard stud spacing (as the bag claims) that might have helped, but we didn't find any perforated batts in our 16 bales.

During the week-long insulation marathon with Gary, we developed a quicker, better method for installing the denim batts. Using sawhorses, a base, quick grips and a utility knife, Gary perfected the quick and clean cut resulting in a precise friction fit that completely filled the wall cavity. Cutting became a one-person job, making quick work for a two-man team. Changing blades often, every three or four long cuts, was key. We wish someone had done this for us, so we're sharing our how-to cut technique below.

After a trip to IKEA to check out the PAX sliding doors and some cabinetry, we've drawn up a detailed plan and interior wall elevations for the bedroom. Amazingly, Brian completed the entire IKEA marathon on crutches and did not indulge in swedish meatballs at the end of the race.

Big sliding doors should help keep the cats (and their fur) off our sweaters without taking up any room and allowing us to open up the wall for doing laundry. We're maximizing the sliding door idea, they just save space. We've also decided to replace our old chimney with a totally tubular skylight for bringing daylight into the closet while reusing the hole in the roof with minimal patch work. Glowing, semi-transparent acrylic doors on the closet might be an interesting day-lighting strategy for the entire room. Saving on electricity might help us rationalize the cost of the doors.

We still need to detail our interior walls. We contacted Serious Materials about their Eco Rock product which will not become available until July or later. We're not sure about using such a new and untested product, but compared to regular old gypsum drywall it claims to use 80% less energy to produce, use more post-industrial recycled material (no gypsum), be re-usable if removed, inhibit mold better and off-gass less. According to the site, "EcoRock generates 60% less dust, and presents no negative effects of airborne mercury often generated during wallboard production using FGD (recycled) gypsum from coal plants." Sounds pretty good, we'll see about the timing and price point. We also want to visit Earth Source Forest Products in Oakland to check out their extensive inventory of formaldehyde-free plywood and fiber board for cabinetry. We've seen some interesting use of plywood as interior finishing surface which would save us from the dust and time of drywall plastering.