Lost A Week

I know I've said it before, but installing the tongue and groove pine on all the walls and ceilings has been an extremely labor-intensive project. Just to remind you:

1. The pine trees were taken down on our Keweenaw property.
2. The trees were made into lumber at a local saw mill.
3. The lumber was stacked carefully in our barn - given time to dry - turned - given more time to dry - and restacked several times during the years before we started construction.
4. The boards were loaded onto a trailer and transported to another mill where they were made into the tongue and groove style we needed.
5. The boards were loaded onto the trailer again, transported back to our property, unloaded and restacked - board by board by board.
6. Finally, the pine made it onto the walls and ceilings of the new house - board by board by board. 

The high and complicated ceiling in the great room took a lot of time and a lot of man hours. So, imagine how Steve felt when he was in the house at 7:30 on a Monday evening in mid-January and he suddenly heard:

Drip. Drip. Drip.

A wet spot was developing on the floor in the great room - water was dripping from his beautiful T & G ceiling. He was obviously horrified and very upset.

It took 2 days and 3 crews to determine that the problem was most likely caused by a spray foam insulation error. A spot missed by the foam crew led to warm air escaping from one of the valleys on the roof - which led to ice formation - which led to ice melting when we had a brief warm spell in January - which led to the dripping. The spray foam company came out with an infrared light, confirmed the problem and promised to make it right.

One especially smart thing Steve has been doing during construction is documenting the process with lots of photos. I wanted them for this blog, of course, and he took very detailed shots of all the wiring (in case he ever wanted to know where a wire was located behind all that T & G). Those wiring photos have already come in handy 5 or 6 times already. He also took detailed shots of the spray foam insulation, and those turned out to be quite important. We were able to look back at the photos on my computer and discovered an area where spray foam was missing in a tiny gap between trusses. We emailed some of those detailed shots to the owner of the spray foam company, and he was able to study them before they went back out to fix the problem. The crew spent an entire day spraying the tiny gap and respraying every other area they could possibly find a way to reach - removing some boards to reach both valleys in the great room - and double-checking everything with that infrared light.

We lost a week in January working on the drip problem, but we only lost a couple of T & G boards. It looks like the problem has been solved, and the Lord helped Steve to keep his sanity that week. We were especially thankful that the flooring hadn't been installed in that area and the furniture wasn't in place. It would have been a much bigger problem and a much bigger mess if we had been living there at the time. The boards have been replaced, and the ceiling is beautiful again.

All is well in the Keweenaw.