Leaks

Several weeks back Ben and I went up on a stormy weekend. Friday night rained hard and steady all night long, and we had a nasty shock when, in the middle of the night, we woke up to find water seeping in through the window and the door on the east side. There were a couple of puddles forming inside our house, and we barely slept the rest of the night listening to the insistent rain and the wind which was driving the rain through the sieve that was that side of the house. Lesson number one: Try not to put your front door on the side that gets the worst weather beating of all! Granted, it's a good door and it shouldn't be leaking no matter how hard the rain is pelting. The Greys guys are fast and we think they rushed it, with serious consequences.

The next morning we covered that whole side of the house with plastic. The Grey's guy came later in the week and did some fiddling. Ben then siliconed around all the door and window jambs, and used this crazy expansion foam inside all interior spaces (below). You squirt it in and it expands to several times it's size, filling every nook and cranny as it goes.

Once windows are nailed in, you tape the outside lip to seal it before you add the siding and the trim. Our house doesn't have siding, and it seems that the tape wouldn't work because the grooves cut into the exterior plywood would undermine the sealing effect of the tape: the water could still get in. So we filled the cracks with silicone and now must wait and see what happens.


This illustrates the perilous nature of the DIY approach when you don't really know what the heck you're doing. There are so many details, as much as you think about it there will always be things that slip by. This of course just adds to the challenge of making it work as a whole, and we'll just pray these types of surprises are few and far between as we forge ahead.