Now that the windows are in, they are busy on both the inside and the outside of the house.  The sheetrockers started last Wednesday.  We went to the house last Friday afternoon and they were well on their way.  They were planning to have the entire house sheetrocked by last Saturday.

The taping is supposed to start this week.  Originally, our plan was to do the sheetrocking and taping ourselves, but after looking at the number of boxes of mud in the garage, I am really glad Tina talked me into allowing them to do it.  There are 30 boxes of mud stacked up in the garage, each one containing enough for 3 1/2 gallons of mud.  It would have taken me two months to slap up that much mud!

The stucco guy and his son were also out there working on the outside.

I had never seen stucco done before, so I found the whole process really interesting.  The stucco guy and his son are both really nice guys.  They took a good 45 minutes to explain the whole process to me.  They start by wrapping the house with Tyvek, just like the vinyl siding we put on our Minnesota house.  Then they cover the Tyvek with about an inch of styrofoam insulation.  Finally, they staple chicken wire to the foam.  They put expansion joints around all of the windows and finally, this week they will be covering the whole thing with concrete.

After all of it is done, the outside walls are going to end up being about 8 inches thick.  My only concern now is that the house might be too well sealed.  I am afraid if we go out for Mexican and I come home and rip a hot one, I may break glass!

They were having another inspection today on both the sheetrock as well as the outside.  If all went well with it, they should be starting stucco and taping tomorrow.

We also ordered the epoxy floor covering for the garage and laundry room floors last week.  We went with a three coat metallic epoxy system.  Tina and I will be doing that part.  If we are successful, it should look almost like marble when we are done.  We went with the epoxy thinking it would be cheaper and faster to install than tile.  But by the time we bought all of the primer and other chemicals it requires, it came out to almost $3 per square foot; in other words, about the same price as cheap ceramic tile.

Brad also mentioned today that we should be able to get in and get started on our part of the build in the next couple weeks.  I am both excited and apprehensive about that.  Every single thing we are doing to this house, we did on our Minnesota house.  So we do not have any significant new skills to learn.  But we have never done this much in a short period of time.

Finally, we have an appointment to meet with a fence guy tomorrow afternoon.  Our friend Eve is going to be releasing her herd of cows into our area in the next couple weeks.  Then we will be surrounded by about 400 head of cattle.  I would prefer if they are not hanging out on our back porch and Eve would prefer the cattle not eat the construction scraps.