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.

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.

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.

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.

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? No.

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).

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.

The muddy mess in front of the garage has been replaced by a driveway.

With the fascia now painted black and a dark stain on the column, this is pretty close to the final look of the house (rain gutters and rain chains still to come).

Local building regulations require a minimum 2-ft-wide concrete strip around the whole house. (I think the idea is to keep water away from the foundation; that should be less of an issue with our generous roof overhangs.) In most places, we extended the width to 3 feet to make a convenient walkway, with bump-outs for BBQ and heat pump. It’s amazing how much of a difference that extra foot makes.

It’s been a year since I last revised the floor plan. With construction almost complete, it’s time to see how it held up to reality.

Let’s start with the outside. This is what the site looked like a year ago.

You can see what our 3D model looked like in the Back on Track post; below is an image where I tried to match angle and date/time to last week’s reality.