Contrary to popular belief, it does sometimes rain in San Diego. The back porch is pretty much finished now, all framed and sheathed, ready for its siding treatment. They're going to use a high-tech stucco finish all over the house, which is very tough and should have no problem covering the styrofoam blocks as well as the plywood sheathing, protecting them for several decades. Also, the color is mixed into the material, so Rosemarie shouldn't ever have to paint.

The crews have applied tar paper to the roof since I was here last, which is doing a pretty good job of keeping the rain out until the finish roofing material is applied, though of course you wouldn't want to rely on it for long. It's rained a lot over the last several days, and the tar paper has warped up a bit, but that shouldn't present any problem.

It actually stopped raining fairly early in the morning, but while we waited for it to dry out we did some stuff indoors. Here Mike sweats (solders) some plumbing fittings for the water heater.

It amazed me how fast things dried out after the rain stopped! An hour later, not only has the ground soaked up the water, the tar paper on the roof has already flattened back out. The sky is still cloudy but everything is dry. That Southern California weather is good for something, I guess.

Because of the weather, only Mike, Glenn and myself showed up today. One of the benefits of the rain was that it showed us where things were leaking. Here Glenn hits one of the leaky spots with some silicone caulk. The idea is to get the house watertight and THEN apply the stucco, so you'll have two waterproof barriers for extra protection.

This is the area below the circuit breaker box, visible in some of the other pictures. A plastic wire routing enclosure has been mounted below it, facing inward, which is used to manage the rats' nest of electrical wiring inside the wall. By code the exterior side has to be closed in with two layers of plywood, so that will be my next job.

And here's the 'after' picture. The round area is where the electrical meter will ultimately go; it had a piece of cardboard covering it which blew off in the weather. Getting water inside the breaker panel is NOT a good idea, so I made a new cardboard cover for it and taped the living hell out of it. Snot coming off now!

Meanwhile, Mike has moved up into the attic and continues sweating up joints in the water pipes. Even though this house is mostly concrete and would be very unlikely to burn, the insurance companies still won't underwrite a fire insurance policy unless there's a sprinkler system in place, powered by a self-contained water system. Probably a good idea actually. Attics aren't very useful for storage these days; they have much too much wiring, ductwork and other systems to be able to use them for anything.

My last job for the day was installing the gable vents under the back porch roof. The underside of any roof has to be ventilated or the roof won't last long at all. Mike bought two vents but didn't need the other one where he thought he would, so he had me install them both here. They look straight don't they?

"From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life." -- Arthur Ashe

September 22, 2004: A frame rises from the rubble

September 28, 2004: Finishing the roof framing

October 5, 2004: Roof sheathing goes on

October 6, 2004: More finish framing

October 12, 2004: Framing the back porch

October 26, 2004: A slow, wet day

November 2, 2004: Bricks on the roof?

November 30, 2004: The walls get sticky

December 7, 2004: Plumbing and wiring the pump house

December 14, 2004: Paint goes on