Attic Insulation

This is one of those projects that I'm extremely glad is over. With the cold weather back for the winter I finally decided that I had to do something about the insulation. Our heating bill last year was sky high. I've already noticed some difference since I caulked the entire outside of the house but I knew we could do a lot better.

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.

House painting and other things...

Even though I haven't posted in over 10 days a lot has been going on here.

I finally finished laying the insulation and sub-floor for the laundry room/attic.

We also decided to hire out the scraping and primering of the house since we are running out of time before the baby is born.

It doesn't even look like the same house with some primer on it. It's about half way done now.

Last night we installed the attic stairs that go to the main attic. The main reason for this is not really storage but the huge amount of debris up there. It's full of 120 years of coal dust, bits of cedar shingles, and mortar from the chimneys. The coal dust and other debris is slowly sifting down through the beadboard ceiling and getting all over everything. The existing attic access was barely large enough for me to squeeze through, let alone a shop-vac.

Here is the opening framed out.

Here is the stairs in place.

I will clean up the ceiling and add the trim later.

This morning I painted the porch floor. It's a Valspar porch paint, the color is brownstone.

Sunroom Interior

I had family over this past weekend for a big cook-out so I had some things I needed to finish up before then. One of them was the sunroom. The doorway between the sunroom and living room was still not framed out, none of the french doors were hung, and I still had nothing on the walls.

First thing I did was frame out the doorway. First, I made the sill.

Then I framed the doorway and installed the french door.

 I used some original plinth blocks on the inside. I dont have any spare fluted casing though so I had to go with plain for now. I will be having some milled to match the original down the road, once I do that I will replace these and install rosettes in the upper corners as well.

I also installed  the french doors that go to the hallway and to the deck.

All of these french doors are salvaged. The doors that lead to the hallway and living room were a pair that came from an old 1906 farmhouse that was being torn down. The smaller door that leads out to the deck was one I found online for free.

As with the screen doors, they all fit the width but not the height of the door frames. These were all too long though and had to be cut down.

I found a really great mortise lock while at a flea market, I got it for $3. It has a dead bolt built into it. I installed it into the door that leads to the deck since this is an outside door. I used an antique set of rosettes and door knob to give it more of an original look.

I still need to find an escutcheon for the dead bolt part of it and finish sanding around the knob. I had to use wood putty to cover the old holes in the door.

The other major undertaking was the sunroom walls.

Some mold had appeared on the inside walls of the sunroom. This was because of a drainage issue that I am working to take care of. I scrubbed the mold off with bleach then primered the inside of the walls.

As you can see in the above picture I also had to run all the electrical  in the walls first. I also sealed all the cracks with expanding foam.

Then I insulated the walls.

I was going to use grooved plywood on the walls but instead went with a press-board material that looks like cedar planks.

There is still a lot left to do in this room. I need to insulate the ceiling and put up beadboard, install all the window trim, then paint the room.

Laundry Room

I stopped working on the fence for a little bit to work on the Laundry room. I had to do this because we were quickly running out of clothes.

The first thing I did was run all the wiring in the floor that needed to be run, this includes the wiring for the overhead lights in the Dining room, kitchen, and bathroom below. With that done I laid R-30 insulation down and installed the sub-floor over it.

Here is part of the sub-floor going down:


Next I built the knee-wall where the washer/dryer will go.

I also installed the sub-panel, this will feed the upstairs rooms.


Here's a question for you Electricians out there, is this sub-panel wired correctly? The main panel is wired with a neutral ground so I added a wire between neutral and ground in this panel.

Next I hung the sheet-rock in the washer/dryer area. installed the dryer plug and vent hole after this picture.




Then I set up the washer and dryer.


This is all I'm going to do on this for now, we have a working washer and dryer and there are more pressing things to do... like maybe getting some electricity to the upstairs bedrooms. We're using flashlights to get around upstairs at night right now.

Laundry room/Attic access

Our laundry room is going to be in the attic space above the dining room and kitchen. The only access to this area was in the bathroom but the shower will be covering it up so I needed to make a new entryway into the area.

The new entryway will be from the back spare bedroom. Here is the corner of the room where the new doorway will be.

Here is the rough opening for the doorway.


Since the dining room/kitchen ceiling is a foot higher (11 feet) there will have to be a step up to get in to the laundry room. Here's the view from inside the attic.


Next I started cleaning out in between the joists, there's over 100 years of dust, coal soot, knob & tube wiring, and old bits of cedar roofing shingles everywhere.


I stopped at this point for a few reasons, first I had stepped on a 3" long nail earlier in the day and my foot was starting to swell up pretty bad, but mainly because I need to get a few things before I can lay the rest of the sub floor down. I need to get some R-30 insulation, and I need to get the sub-panel and install it first.

The sub-panel will be installed here in the laundry room and control the entire upstairs and a few of the overhead lights downstairs. I also have to wire up the overhead lights before the sub-floor can go down.

Hanging sheetrock in the kitchen

We didn't get as much done as we had hoped today. I had wanted to get all the sheetrock hung but we had too many delays that prevented that.

After hanging the first piece I remembered that I needed to add the extra bracing for the upper cabinets. I had to cut the sheetrock in two places to add it since I wasn't about to remove the piece. It was a really tight fit and was a pain to get it in place.


Then I added the bracing to the rest of the wall.


The following pics show how far I got.



One of the many delays we had was going outside to take pictures of the snow. We actually had over 4" of the stuff! We even heard thunder a few times during the storm. These pictures were taken about 1/2 an hour after it started snowing, that should give you an idea of how hard it was snowing.

Kitchen insulation

The kitchen is finally starting to look like a room again. I had some electrical to finish up on the exterior walls. I ran the wiring for the under counter lights and the wiring for the garbage disposal.


Next I had to seal up all the holes in the walls with Great Stuff.



With that done I began insulating the walls. I'm using R19.



Tomorrow I'll be putting up the sheetrock.