Insulation Day 1

That's right, folks! We're at the insulation stage. Who knew that it would take three years to get here, but there's a season and time for everything, right?

I was joined back down at the house today by Mama and my two teenage brothers. It was hot and extremely humid and we were very thankful to have this wonderful invention plugged in to the master bedroom:

It's a secondhand refrigerator from one of my Father's rental properties. He needed to move it and I needed a frige, and so the other night he and I brought it to town. It is fairly filthy, and the refrigerator part isn't particularly cold, but the freezer part is excellent for storing bottles of water in. And so refreshing! Hopefully I'll be able to clean it up and maybe tinker with it to get the refrigerator part working better. But hey, it's free and I'm not one to turn down appliances.

But back to the work...

The boys mainly measured and cut insulation while I put up the house wrap and Mama put up the insulation. The boys sped things up remarkably and we couldn't have gotten it all done without them. And lucky for me, Mama's put up insulation before so she knew what she was doing.

Isn't that one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen? You're looking at the foyer wall, the room that used to be part of the porch. I took a picture of the front door wall, too, which is done, but so much light comes in, it's impossible to get a picture that's not dark.

I started off in the kitchen, and worked my way through the great room, finishing off the housewrap in about a one foot strip around the top of the rooms. My ceilings are 10'1'' and the wrap comes in rolls of 9'. This picture is the exterior wall of the little bedroom.

This shot is looking towards the front of the house. This wall is almost done, too. Mama and the boys hung the long strips first, then did the angled ones, and are saving all the smaller spots, like above and below the windows, for the scrap left over at the end instead of cutting into new rolls.

This is a table and chair set I inherited from my sister (thanks!), which came in handy today, too. The wall behind it is done. With two people on ladders, one of the boys spent a lot of time refilling my and Mama's stapler. When we ran out, we'd yell that we were "out of bullets" and they would come refresh our hammer staplers.

This is the same wall, but now from the kitchen view. I finally got the area around the kitchen window done; it's where I left off last time when my stapler got jammed.

And here we have the back wall of the kitchen, looking out onto the back porch, but don't look at Mama (taking a much deserved break), she didn't want her picture taken. From here it almost looks like I have a green lawn, but really, it's just trimmed weeds. The lawn will come later, though. For now, just squint your eyes a bit.

We got a late start, but we got a LOT done, half the house is insulated! It's amazing how much more of a house insulation going up makes it look. Maybe because I'm one step closer to having walls, or maybe it's the way the brown craft paper reads as a solid surface... I'm not sure, but it's a very great feeling to know that from where I started, I took it all down, had it put all back, and now am being able to close it all up again.

Oh yeah, I passed all my inspections, too. Electrical, Plumbing, HVAC. It's all ready to go and waiting on me to finish the rest of the wrap and insulation.

And maybe, just maybe, we'll hear back from the Sheetrock Guys who came in to look at the house last week!

Thanks again to Mama and the boys today. I couldn't have done so much without you.