Halfway Down the Stairs

Ahem,
Blogger very kindly e-mails copies of my comments to me. Oftentimes, they are questions about my post, however, I find that I cannot respond to these comment/e-mails. I am at rather a loss at how to answer you lovely commenters.

About my house:

We bought a stucco home in 2000 that had been built in 1997. I was quite smug buying only a slightly used house as our old stucco home had become rather a nightmare. Shortly after we moved in we discovered that many of our neighbors (our neighborhood was almost entirely stucco - 3-4 brick homes) were discovering problems with moisture intrusion. Our neighborhood is a no-egress culs-de-sac filled street about .9 miles long, one side overlooks a golf course, the other side overlooks a bike path.

By 2003 several homes had had their stucco sidings removed, their home repaired and new (usually different) sidings put on their homes. Turns out we all had different builders, but they all used the same sub-contractors and none of them had been built to code. At that point we called an inspector and and attorney. Long story short: building code violations, framing damage, lawsuit mediated and settled, house being repaired.

We have opted to replace our stucco with Hardeeboard (a concrete product), and cultured stone. All of our windows are being replaced by the window company (part of the settlement, though they admit no culpability, and frankly, I don't believe the windows caused the problem, it was entirely poor contractor work.)

So that is what is going on at my building site of a house right now. It's freaky (and yes, VERY cold, I'm quite scared to see my heating bill) and scary, but we hope to be done by March.

I hope that answers all of your thoughtful questions.

Hockey tonight, and tomorrow.
Oh, and I turn 46 tomorrow too (last time I'll remember that on the spur of the moment).