Interior

• Kitchen Remodeling
• Flooring
• Door Installation/Replacement
• Drywalls
  I spent over 3 hours chipping and scraping the snow and ice away, breaking my good shovel in the process, but I learned a great deal while doing it. The way the ice had formed under the snow had a significant impact on how easy or difficult it was to remove it. Some ice would flake away easily but some would need beating with a hammer and sometimes levering up with a pry bar. I fairly trashed the shingle surface in some places but we are planning on replacing the roof in the near future anyway. Besides, I figured it would be easier to repair a few shingles than to have to repair the drywall and insulation inside.
• Framing
  Once the ice was clear I used an infra red camera to look at the heat pattern of the house. Looking at the house in this “new light” really opened my eyes but confirmed what I had suspected all along. Even though the house had been insulated in the walls and attic a number of years back, there were some areas that had not been reached. The camera showed several hot spots, especially the sloped ceilings of the small bedroom closets as well as the area behind and above the bathtub (especially when someone was showering). The intersections of the dormer walls to the roof framing were also hot, indicating that there may be physical air leakage there.
• Cabinet Installation

Construction

• New Construction
  Ratings can be carried out on existing buildings but are more commonly done on new construction where the margins of effective work can be tweaked prior to beginning construction. Improvements on existing buildings are generally fairly obvious once the visual and blower door inspections are done and don't need the detail of the computer.

Exterior

• Window Installation/Replacement
  I look at many details on the exterior of the house including the overall condition of the siding, soffits, windows and doors. I will comment on the way rain water is controlled around the house by way of the gutters and downspouts and on the way the grading will (or won't) direct water away from the foundation. A common area for defects on a house is exterior decks. Often these are not well attached to the house so I look carefully at these and comment accordingly.
• Decks
• Gutters
• Siding
  Most of our kitchen is under the second floor but part of it is bumped out with a flat roof on top. Climbing out onto the flat roof I saw that the regular roof above had a huge amount of ice on it. More disturbing was the fact that the short wall below it had icicles coming out of the siding! There was definitely some water inside the wall which explained how it was making its way down into the kitchen ceiling area. At the same time, I found a leak up at the front of the house where we had recently enclosed the old front porch. Seems as though conditions were coming together perfectly to cause water to back up and action was called for.

General

• Carpentry
  The basement is the best place to look at the condition of the foundation assuming that it has not been converted to a living space. I look for cracks in the basement walls and if there are any signs of water intrusion and I will closely examine the condition of any posts and beams holding up the structure. The underside of the first floor can also be inspected, again, if it has not been covered with a ceiling. The quality of the carpentry in the floor area tells a lot about the care that was taken in building the house.
• Insulation
  The fix? Well, come Springtime, I will be up in the attic going at it. As with any attic, it is important to seal up any penetrations in the ceiling below including electrical boxes, around plumbing pipes, holes for wiring etc. Spray foam is usually the best for larger gaps but smaller ones can be filled with caulk so I'll use a combination of these materials where needed. The attic hatch is pretty leaky so I’m going to install a foam gasket around the opening and glue some rigid insulation to the hatch itself. Because there is no soffit and therefore no air passages up to the attic, I’m going to make sure that the intersection of the roof, ceiling and wall is completetly air sealed and well insulated. Spray foam is just the ticket for this job.