We finished the wall sheathing on the second floor, which involved a lot of cutting for the angles under the eaves, windows, and the back door. After finishing up the wall sheathing, we did a little clean up to remove obstacles and make the site easier to get around. We got a few ladders out so we could reach the higher wall sections. Since we didn't install any windows, or any other doors except the side door on this trip, we sheathed right over some of the openings. We will have to cut those out later--in the Fall.
We started applying the house wrap from the bottom up, stapling the housewrap to the sheathing and making sure each upper layer overlapped the one below. We taped up all of the seams and did a little more cleanup work when we finished that task. At this point, we were finished with everything we could do on this trip. The structure was built and it would survive the weather and elements until we got back again to do more work on it.
Oddly, we hadn't seen our earthwork contractor in 10 days and he still had work to finish. The remaining earthwork could have been completed over a week earlier, but the contractor was missing in action. He still needed to finish up the driveway, complete the backfill around the foundation using the large piles of dirt he left close by--which actually created obstacles for the rest of us to work around while we completed other tasks. We can't even count the number of times the dirt piles he left caused someone to trip. Also, working around the piles resulted in more effort to maneuver materials or equipment around, and the lack of backfill around the foundation walls caused ladders to lean, sink, or fall--unacceptable. Our entire experience with this contractor was not only inconveniencing, it was a nightmare.
We ordered a garage door and scheduled the installation. Unfortunately, the door would not arrive until two days after we finished our work and left Maine. When the garage door arrived, one of the panels had a blemish that the installer found unacceptable--we never got to see it, but he was looking out for us, so he used a blank panel he had on hand and went ahead and installed the door so the building was secured until the new panel arrived.
The replacement panel with the windows arrived about two weeks later and they installed everything as soon as it arrived. Once the garage door was installed the entire structure was sealed up, secure, and weather tight. Then along came the earthwork contractor, finishing the job over a month after he started....sort of.
Throughout this entire phase of the project, this contractor put us and everyone else behind schedule. He left a mess of the site, neglected to perform a couple of minor tasks, argued over what was and wasn't in the contract, and even tried to squeeze us for more money at the end, which he didn't get. His justification? He said he felt he should get more money because he thought he did a good job despite the list of shortcoming we cited. Even worse, he also said that we had good jobs, so he believed we could afford to pay more! No, that's not how it works. We paid him what we contractually agreed to--not a penny more or less despite his shoddy work.