Wha--who installed knotty pine in my house?!

Okay. I admit it. 

It was me.

I am weak.

Yes, I did say I don't want my house to look like a cabin or a beach-house. Yes, I probably mentioned knotty pine tongue-and-groove (or TNG) by name. But... I was sick of plywood. And to be very honest... TNG is fun to work with! 

Interior Walls: Wallpaper Liner

My interior has been sitting with an unevenly primed OSB surface for quite some time now.  Not the most gorgeous wall finish... but it wasn't finished; it was waiting. Waiting for the loft floors to be fastened down, waiting for the ceiling panels to go up, waiting for all manner of tasks along the way to be completed.

Now, after a whopping two days' hard labor (sarcasm--I hardly accomplish anything in two days anymore), the wait is over! Check out that much-smoother-than-OSB surface!

Priming the Walls

ATTENTION: BORING BLOG POST AHEAD. Proceed only if you require more details about applying wallpaper primer to OSB than the words "applying wallpaper primer to OSB" communicate.

My plan is to cover my walls in wallpaper liner. Wallpaper liner--AKA wall liner, and several other names--is a thick, plain kind of wallpaper that is used to create a smooth, paintable surface where once there was cinderblock, horrid wood paneling from the 70s, decrepit wallpaper, or some other undesirable surface that would be a pain in the neck to remove (like... an OSB SIP skin). It's a pretty simple DIY task with only one real prep step: priming the surface with wallpaper primer.

Walls - Day 8-11 - Top and Cap Plates

First piece of cap plate: installed

We already finished installing the walls. Yay! But there are two more elements needed to create the transition between the walls and the rafters: the top plate and the cap plate.

How about a vocabulary lesson?

The top plate is the 2x4 lumber that fits inside the groove in the foam along the top of the walls. It is required.  It spans the seams between panels and adds another layer of holding-it-all-togetherness, like an extra spline.

The cap plate is the optional (in my particular SIP system) piece of 2x6 lumber, ripped down to 4.5" wide, that goes on top of the top plate. The point of the cap plate is to add extra wall height and/or point-load strength (i.e. so the weight that is transferred down the rafters doesn't deform the wall).