Yesterday work started on our stairs.  The landing has been in for a few days, but now we have stairs going from it to the first floor and down to the basement. And when I was on site this morning, the stringers for the stairs up to the second floor were being cut so hopefully those will be accessible this evening to try out.  Additionally, the framers were getting the parapets together and we discussed details for the steel frame that is going to hold up our screen around the lower roof garden which will hopefully be welded together this week.

Siding

The roofers came in yesterday as well to start on the membrane that wraps our house.  We’re using a peel and stick bituthene to give a totally impervious coating on the whole thing… We’re using it mainly because there aren’t very many options available for open seam rain screen systems in the US and this is a decent product that is fine for UV exposure and our contractor trusts.  Aside from that, the only real housewrap that seems good for applications that will receive UV exposure is put out by a company called Vaproshield. Its a little frustrating to be running into issues of product availability knowing that what we need is pretty commonplace in Europe, there is even a readily available / off the shelf tyvek product specifically designed for open seam rain screen applications that is totally unavailable in the US.  But anyways, this stuff is working fine.  The one issue is that it looses some adhesion when the sun hits it so the battens are probably going to have to go up pretty quickly to secure the membrane while it sets up.