The front door (from Neuffer in Germany) is now installed, very happy with how it looks. The builder also installed the doors to the patio and backyard (matching the windows by Alpen in Colorado). They are large and heavy – check out those hinges. Each hinge can be adjusted in all three dimensions. Some more adjustments are still needed to make sure they close as tightly as required (more on that in the next blog post).

As explained in a previous post, making the house airtight is crucial to passive house: air lost is energy lost. As well as a loss in comfort, air quality, and confidence that the house will perform as calculated. A blower door test is used to determine how airtight the house is. After a fan is mounted in a doorway, the house is depressurized by 50 pascals, and the airflow is measured.

We ran a second blower door test after sealing up a bunch of leaks. The result was a lot better: we got down to 1.1 ACH50 (air changes per hour at 50 pascals): a big improvement from 1.6, but not up to the passive house standard of 0.6. Before the test We sealed off all the drains with plastic sheeting and duct tape. The front door was much better adjusted, and also got taped on the outside.

After our last blower door test, the builder found and fixed a significant leak hidden behind one of the beams. Hopefully, that was the last one, as the airtight membrane is now inaccessible behind the drywall (gypsum board, sheetrock) in the ceiling. Before mounting the drywall on the straw panels, the wood beams are furred out a bit so that any straw sticking out doesn’t cause the boards to warp. We’re also using 5/8" drywall everywhere to keep it as straight as possible (also improves sound proofing).

The walls are now finished, and they have started on flooring. We chose an easy-to-maintain luxury vinyl floor for the main room and the bedrooms, and tile for the bathrooms. It’s the glue-down kind: after spreading glue directly on the concrete, they carefully lay down the floor plank by plank. At the doors, they added some thinset to flatten it and make it stronger where it’s on top of the insulation.

The kitchen cabinets have been installed, and they look beautiful. As the kitchen divides the great room, we finally get to experience the proportions of dining and living area. There’s extra space on the dining side, that could have been made tighter, but it looks like the whole layout will work well. The cabinets were expertly made and installed by Boardwalk Cabinetry; the wood is Rustic Maple with a Smoke finish.

Both interior and exterior are making good progress. Interior The interior trim was added, including doors and closet dividers. Note that the bedrooms have 9 ft ceilings, so both interior doors and closet doors are 8 ft tall. The window sills stick out about an inch. On the two larger windows, the sill sticks out about 3 inches to create window seats. Tile in the showers is starting to look good.

The countertops are in – a quartz called Carrara Breve (3 cm thick). There’s an 18 inch overhang by the breakfast bar; supports will be added along the wall in addition to some metal brackets. At one point, this overhang was supposed to be 15 inches, but that idea got lost somewhere. Thus the edge of the counter doesn’t line up exactly with the wall as planned. Is anybody except me going to notice?

Another step closer to the finish line: the interior of the house has been painted. As mentioned before, our choice was Sherwin Williams Kilim Beige, with trim at quarter-strength. Another finishing detail in progress: kitchen backsplash (Cosmic Square Graphite 6x6 from WOW). Soffit On the outside, the soffit is being finished before they put up the stone and finish the stucco. It may look like wood, but it’s not. We decided to go with the low-maintenance SAGIWALL V-Groove in Caramel Cedar by Sagiper.

This blog post is coming from inside the house: we now have power and internet. No plumbing yet. So as I’ve been working from the office this week, the purple porta-potty outside is still crucial. No heating either, but a small space heater is plenty to keep the house warm, even with snow and frosty nights outside. Gigabit fiber as well as Cat 6 Ethernet cables converge in a central cabinet.