Walls

First the studs are sheathed with oriented strand board and then covered with a vapor barrier. Then the concrete boards are nailed over that.

The concrete board is covered with a skim coat of fiber reinforced mortar.

Finally, the elastomeric coat is applied which has the desired color mixed into it. Real stucco is made up of multiple layers of concrete, but the DuRock system goes up easier and does not crack as readily as concrete does.


Craft used blown insulation in the exterior walls and attic. After the exterior wall sheathing goes up and before the sheetrock is put up inside, netting is put across the studs on the inside to hold the blown insulation.

In the accompanying picture, you can see a blue horizontal streak above the windows. That is where the netting overlaps. Right above that you can see holes where the hose insulation was blown in. Similar holes can be seen below the windows.

We got a pleasant surprise at the amount of extra insulation Craft uses. In addition to the exterior walls, batts of insulation were put into a lot of interior walls for sound-proofing purposes. In the picture on the left, insulation is being put between the dining room and the guest bath and laundry room areas. This will cut down on noise from the washer/dryer.

Here, insulation goes between the kitchen and the study/bedroom.

Insulation was also used between the master bedroom and the living room. This will help let us sleep even when someone is still watching TV in the living room or playing music in the den.


We told Craft about this and he reassured us that his subs would do a good, tight job, which they did. However, one thing we had to insist on was the use of sheetrock screws instead of nails.

We drove around looking at other gray stucco houses to see what color and style of trim we preferred. With stucco, you normally have a 4"-6" wide band of trim around each window and an 8" (or so) band of trim around the floor level of the wall.