Attic Insulation Lessons Learned

After doing 2 types of insulation (foam and batting) in my attic, I have some experienced advice.
1. Removing old insulation is one of the worst projects. Don't bother.
2. Because of #1, foam insulation is only worth it for new construction.
3. Plan to do attic insulation in cool weather (70 degrees or less).
4. If doing batting insulation, arm yourself with a few 2x4s (a/b 4 ft long was good for me)... I used a couple of them to sit on and then used one to push the insulation where it needed to be.
5. Wear long sleeves, long pants, a mask, eye wear, and gloves.
6. Have an exacto knife available and some plywood to cut on b/c you may need to cut the insulation bats into pieces.
7. Solicit help. You'll at least want 1 person to hand insulation bats up to you and it's really not a good idea to climb ladders and do projects that involve balancing on beams by yourself. Heaven forbid you fall through the ceiling. We found an awesome trio worked really well... 2 in the attic to move stuff around and one to hand insulation up.
8. Borrow a truck/SUV to transport insulation. I could only fit 4 bundles in my car (and I needed 6-7 for my small attic).

Green with Truck Envy

If you ever want to be surrounded by all LOT of pickup trucks... situate yourself on a military base. When visiting a friend of mine who lives on a base, I had some overwhelming truck envy. There are so many times it would be great to have my own truck, but I can't justify two vehicles. Besides I'm super lucky to have great friends with trucks who are willing to help me when I really need it... and for those times that I don't have help, delivery costs aren't high enough to justify buying a truck. So I rationalized my envy away and will continue to make due without.

Broke AND bruised a nail

While doing some deck building, my thumb got slammed between a 4x4 and a 6x6. It was painful and left quite a bruise. I can use my thumb again without it hurting, but for a while there... it was all sorts of painful.

Anyway this is evidence that I named my blog well.

Guess I could put on some nail polish again to hide my boo boo. [Can you tell I've been hanging out with a 4 year old and an almost-2 year old?]

Area 51?

After showing my co-worker my attic insulation outfit he wondered if I was actually doing work in Area 51 instead of my neighbor's attic. Always jokes about my house projects :)
For the record, I don't suspect any supernatural activity in my neighborhood, however we found a 1979 newspaper in my neighbor's attic. Her attic was definitely due for some new insulation... or at least some cleaning out.

Payback

For so many projects, I've had to make my house worse before it gets better. Well, my house teamed up with my neighbor's house to pay me back for all of those times.

I had to do some acts of contortion in order to balance on ceiling joists for insulating our attics, which resulted in an absurd number of bruises on my arms and legs. They're healing pretty quickly though.

Adventures in Attic Insulation: Phase We're old pros now

It may have taken us 3 hours to do my neighbor's attic insulation, but two evenings later we did mine in less than an hour. We're quick learners! The three of us (my neighbor's friend is super cool and came to help insulate at my house too!) had a system down and I made some other adjustments in my attic to make it more bearable so we didn't need to take any breaks (post on that coming soon). I was flabbergasted a/b how efficient we were. I was so excited about it that I probably said "I can't believe how quickly we are getting this done" enough times to make my neighbor think, "Yeah, yeah. I get your point." Although she was probably equally excited and relieved since she was in the hot attic with me.
So glad that is done and I don't have to deal with fiberglass again... or at least for a while. My house will stay cooler this summer and warmer this winter.

Adventures in insulation - Phase 3-hour-workout

My neighbor's next-to-nothing insulation looked like this across her attic:

The temperature dropped to the 80s so we decided to tackle the insulation in her attic. It was still really hot up there and took some contortion in order to get the bundles in the back of the small angled portion of the attic, but we did it with the help of one of her friends in about three hours. Like many sports, we took time-outs and water breaks; we had our endurance tested and sprinted at the end; we had to think out strategy and execute; and got very very sweaty. I mean... check out my oompa loompa get-up.

Anyway, I'm pleased to post this picture of her newly insulated attic! We're exhausted, sore, and even itchy, but have planned to do this to my attic on Wednesday night. We feel like we have a good system down and are hoping to be able to do it in 2 hours this time! Wish us luck.

Joist walking

My dog has gotten pretty good at walking along the joists of the deck. It's pretty awesome so I've uploaded a video.

One tool? or TOOLS?

I needed to get a 3/4 inch wrench to tighten up the bolts for the railing posts on my deck. I had some options... One wrench for $11 or 11 wrenches for $20! [Note: The set was on sale. Same brand. Same shiny 3/4 inch wrench. Same "lifetime commitment" (as the advertisement above them claimed... I should have taken a picture of the ad)].

This? ($10)

Or these? ($20)

Needless to say, I have a lot more wrenches.

Steps and railing posts

My deck has come a long way in the past week thanks to my parents and Whitney for their hard work in the 100+ degree weather. Thank goodness for a lot of shade! Where we left the deck on Friday was passing framing inspection: all beams placed, fence up, & joists attached. My dad was insistent on getting the steps made and the posts for the railing attached before he left. We worked hard on Saturday to fill in some holes and pound the dirt tight and level in order to set pavers for the steps. Unfortunately that led to a 4x4 falling smack dab on my thumb so it's a little swollen and painful, but it wouldn't be a real DIY project w/o some bumps and bruises (and a couple of splinters in this case).We brought a few deck boards out so that we wouldn't need to balance on joists (although my dog does that well - video of that coming soon). Here's a look a the step with those deck boards. The steps are attached with braces and drilled into the 4x4. Each 4x4 post is attached with 2-1/2 inch bolts, nuts, and washers. We used 2x8 pieces as blocking and deck tension ties to attach the posts that run along the joist (left hand side on picture below). Since the beams are 2-2x8s thick, we did not need additional materials to attach the posts to the beam (closest side in picture below).

Adventures in (more) insulation - Phase Transportation

Both my neighbor and I need insulation in our attics. She has next-to-none and I need to supplement the foam insulation. We decided it would be most cost effective if we bought it together so that we can get the "contractor's discount" of 10%. Unlike contractors, we lack trucks. It took two trips to Lowes with 2 cars each time to transport our 13 bundles of insulation. They're heavy bundles and took some convincing to fit in the cars, but we did it! Only a few were slightly mangled, so they may not be as "sexy" (it's a safe link, I swear) as they once were, but they'll still do the job.

Car stuffed full!

Plus what you can see,
there's a bundle in the trunk of this car too

Framing Inspection Passed!

And our questions answered! BooYah! Deck!

"Need to trust my instincts" or "Opportunity for ingenuity."

Yesterday's conversation while in Lowes:

Me: "I'm going to get another box of nails, just in case. I'll bring it back if I don't need it... unless you are sure we won't need them."
Dad: "Let's just check out."
Me: "Ok. If you say so. But you're going to get more if we need them."

Today:

Me: "How's it going out there?" (They worked on hanging the rest of the joists while I did some work.) 

Mom (cracking up): "We're going to need more nails."

Turns out she was laughing so hard because Dad had said "The little b***h was right." I prefer his normal nickname for me which starts the same way, but is more endearing - Bitty.

We didn't end up going to the store though. We used some of the decking screws I already had. Luckily they hadn't used all of the nails on the inner boards because we needed to use them on the outside joists. Some of the nails were too long to go into the outside boards and I don't have a pair of heavy-duty pliers to cut the nail in one fell swoop. Here's what we did:

On the left: Dad took a pair of electrical pliers and made a notch in the nail where he wanted it shortened.

On the right: We took other pliers - one to hold the nail steady and one to bend at the notch - and bent it up and down until it broke.

Rosie (one of my parent's dogs)
is hiding

What we've got so far.

Up next? Inspection... or at least questions for the inspector.

Parents visit and parents help build a deck!

My parents came to visit me for Independence Day through this weekend. Since I had the day off, we worked on the deck to cut the posts for the last beam and to set it 24 feet away from the house. We must have measured it 4 different ways 10 times! We mixed the last bag of concrete for the hole along the fence and filled in holes with sand. I had already nailed in the joists between the band board and the beam closest to the house, but we did a few more yesterday... mainly in order to put up one of the fence panels. When I got home from work today, the rest of the fence panels along the deck were in place! They had also put in more joists (dealing with split and warped boards) before they ran out of joist hangers and it got too hot. The frame is almost complete!
There's still a decent amount of work to do for the railing and steps, but we are making lots of progress now.
Kudos to my dad for some creative engineering (that's where I get it from). And Kudos to my mom for her persistence (and that's where I get that from).

BTW- My awesome neighbors helped me stain those fence panels. Nice, huh?!?

The Derecho had mercy on me... deck building continues

After a crazy storm on Friday I was one of the lucky ones to have power on Saturday morning. I was grateful for the power mainly so deck work could continue... although having AC was nice. Three of my friends came over before it got terribly hot on Saturday. We spent about three hours placing the center beam (which involved a lot of measuring and calculations) and setting three fence posts. We made sure the posts were straight and level with my new favorite tool - a post leveler:

We came up with some clever ways to keep the posts level while the concrete we poured around them set.

I spent some time this evening attaching joist hangers and filling in the holes. Here's the progress and the slowly diminishing fill dirt hill

p.s. I made a falafel bar for lunch on Saturday including jalapeño-cilantro sauce, roasted red pepper hummus, cucumber-dill yogurt, tomatoes and cucumber in balsamic, and pita.