She's Going to be a Hot One

Next winter, that is. And I'm not forecasting the weather. I don't care how cold of a winter we have, we will be a lot toastier in the house.

We spent the weekend blowing insulation into the house. Troy and I don't have a lot of days off together so when these major holidays come along, we need to take advantage of them.

Saturday morning, Troy sped off to Menards to get the machine and some insulation while I did what I could to prepare, like hanging plastic and draping things I couldn't move out of the room.

 Here he comes!

One the first trip, Troy got the machine and one pallet. We blew that into the attic in pretty short order. Then he went back for more and came back with two pallets. He drew a lot of stares driving back from Menards!

He got as far as he could on the attic and then stopped as he needed to be able to make repairs to the antenna. (He caught the cord at some point and ripped off the end.) Troy put the antenna up in the attic to keep it safe from bad weather, which has worked out quite well.

By the time he left the attic, it was pretty full. Looking north:

 And looking south:

For comparison, notice the "doorway" on the left side in the picture below:

When Troy could do no more in the attic (for the day), he moved onto the second floor. He got about half way around the room filling the bottom holes before we ran out of insulation.

Troy brought back the machine and then brought home another pallet. (We thought we'd need two, and he wouldn't have room for two pallets and the machine the next day.) The next day after church and lunch, he went back for the machine and a fifth pallet and I stacked up the pallet we didn't use the day before so it was all ready to go.

Just before we got started on Sunday. Don't we look like
we're about to have fun!?

As Troy was picking up the fifth pallet in two days, the guy at Menards looked agog and asked "Just how big is your house?" I don't think he gets a lot of people installing it 12" thick.

Meanwhile, Troy had fixed the antenna (yeah!) so we finished the attic and the walls on the second floor. Then Troy wanted to blow insulation into the attic above the back room (laundry room). So we moved the machine to the back and did that too. That meant moving a bunch of stuff that I had put there because I thought it was a "safe" zone. We used up just over 4.5 pallets in all and wrapped up on Sunday by 8:00. We were both ready to be done!

That means the attic space is done. I'm happy to think we won't have to do that again! And of course, it will make a huge difference on the temperature of the house. And half of the upstairs is done. And I'd say about half of the downstairs. We are getting there...