Remodeling question

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Well, this has been one of those weeks. We are remodeling our kitchen and have found the entire exterior wall that the sink is on is toast. Old termite damage and rot. The only thing holding the silly thing together is the cheesie siding and bad sheetrock. We've put up a temporary interior wall like the "books" said and have begun demolition and rebuilding the stud support. We were in the process of trying to replace the window over the kitchen when we found out the difference between new contruction windows and replacement windows. Since we had to completely rebuild the wall, we needed new construction windows. We ended up putting a piece of plywood over the hole in the house until we can get back to the lumberyard in a couple of days to switch out the windows.

Anyway, my question really regards the exterior stuff. We've found out that we need to put up new sheathing boards, since the old house under the siding has crumbled to dust. No kidding. We will be using exterior grade plywood with foam Selatex insulation (hope I spelled that right). Anyway, we want to do a stucco/adobe type thing over that, but money and weather will make us wait on that part until spring.

Whew! lol Finally the question .... Do we have to cover the Selatex insulation boards with plastic or will it in itself protect against the weather and all that? Or should we stop at just the exterior grade plywood and wait on the insulation boards until spring too? Don't want to ruin the walls inside or out. We just started out to redo a window and found out that we really had no walls at all. Kinda scarey.

Thanks for your help. Iris

-- Iris (Sar_India@msn.com), November 20, 2001

Answers

I would stop at the plywood sheathing, and insulate the window space with fiberglass batting until spring. If what you are talking about is what I think, the weather is not kind too it, and tends to make it dusty and irritating.

-- Laurean (cranston_06010@yahoo.com), November 20, 2001.

I left my house unclapboarded for a year. It had high r sheathing like your Celotex. I made sure all joints in the sheathing were caulked or taped well. Then I wrapped the house in Tyvek [again..taping all seams]. It stood up fine.

-- pc (jasper2@doglover.com), November 20, 2001.

Iris, I know the board has people more experienced than I, and I'm sure you will hear from them..but If I am reading your post correctly you are planning on doing all of this work and leaving plywood exposed to the weather? You need to, at the least cover the area with tar paper. Minimal investment, and it will hold you over until spring.

-- Kathy (catfish201@hotmail.com), November 20, 2001.

Howdy, Iris. Sounds like you guys are having some fun!! I've been dealing with rotted punky wood for the last week or so working on saving an old school gymnasium from the thirties. Blech! If selotex is a foam insulation board it probably has a thin film of plastic on each side and is a blue or pink color...is this what you have? If so, I would definitely put this up on top of the plywood to keep the ply from getting wet. Blueboard, (as it is affectionately called by those who use lots of it)can stand the weather very well. I have used scrap pieces of it to insulate my chicken tractors in the winter for two years runnung and would use it again this year but the guinea hens have been eating it.

If selotex is a black or dark brown fiber board, I would stick with the plywood.

If you need to you can use a replacement window in new construction, you merely need to cut your own exterior trim and attach it to the outside face of the window. Hope that makes sense.

PC has a good point, you at least want to tape or caulk the seams. Tyvek isn't really necessary but it wouldn't hurt.

-- gilly (wayoutfarm@skybest.com), November 20, 2001.


Hey thanks folks. All this really helped. Gilly, our house is one of those pretend houses constructed back in the late 70's. We have those flimsy aluminum windows and with no wood box around them like in older houses. That would've made our lives soooooo much easier if they had. Besides, if athe house had wooden windows, I would've probably restored them instead of relacing the entire thing. I love wooden windows.

Our wall was so badly rotted that it sounded like potato chips when we tore out the old studs. Back then, well, at least on this house, they put up the studs, wrapped the entire house in black tar paper, and then put on the outside cheap, and I mean cheap, partical board siding. No insulation or sheathing at all. The inside walls had insulation, so I guess they thought that was enough. Wow, not for me it isn't. It feels like we are rebuilding this entire house just to keep it from falling down. It really is nothing special, so I'm beginning to wonder why we didn't just salvage what we could use and tear down the thing. Build from scratch. lol I guess folks always feel that way when they get into big projects like this.

-- Iris (Sar_India@msn.com), November 21, 2001.



We are also replacing windows and have found it is cheaper, time vs money to just order and wait for the right size windows than to tear apart and reframe. About 30$ more in our case. Course you are already torn apart! Condolences, and especially with the holidays looming! Celotex is great, buy the aluminum tape sold with it and hit all the seams, hit the nail heads with caulk and you have your vapor barrier. We have some up on the back of our guest house going 2 years I think :) Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), November 21, 2001.

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