The attic was a huge mess.
It seems that over the years when the roofers would replace an old cedar shingle roof with a new one they would leave whatever dropped in the attic. There was also a ton of old coal dust. This was the worst. It has the consistency of baby power so it gets all over everything. I was completely black from head to toe for the three days it took to clean the attic out.
I started by using a large metal dust pan to scoop up piles of the debris and dumped it into a trash can. Then I would cart the trash can down stairs and outside and dump it into large contractor trash bags.
Once the large debris was removed I vacuumed up the rest with a shop-vac. When doing this it's imperative to use vacuum bags, otherwise the coal dust just clogs up the filter almost immediately.
After three days of this hell it was finally done and I was ready for insulation. The insulation only took about an hour and a half.
I think I have close to an R-19 value right now. In a few weeks I'm going to double the amount and go to R-30.
