more insulation...

Last week found us in the attic of the addition hurling bats of R38 insulation around. Yesterday I placed them in their proper positions and, just like that, it looked like we had made all kinds of progress!

Not ones to rest on our laurels, this morning (and afternoon) found us in the crawl space under the addition inserting bats of R30 insulation between the floor joists.

Once we had accomplished that task, we went inside the addition and stuck bats of R21 insulation in between the wall studs. Then we got sick of it and quit before finishing it off...

We are dirty. Our skin itches and our eyes burn. It's time for a shower. All in all a good day.

Insulation

See those feet hanging down from the ceiling? Those are attached to me. I'm sitting on a piece of plywood in the attic of the addition.

Here's the rest of me. It looks like I'm going to a Halloween party dressed as the unabomber but I'm not. Look closely at my sweatshirt and you will see lots of pink fluff on it.
It's fiberglass insulation. Grace handed it up to me and I tossed it around in the attic.

This is what things looked like in the end. This is what 320 square feet of R38 fiberglass insulation looks like piled up in a heap. We will put it in its proper place next week. I'm itchy. I'm going to take a shower and then we are rewarding ourselves with a trip to the North Fork Beer Shrine with friends....

Ceiling drywall...

It was a miserable, rainy, windy, cold, typical northwest Washington fall day today. Until this point in our addition project, weather like this would mean not working on the addition at all. But those days are all in the past because now (insert drumroll here) - we are working inside! Today we got most of the ceiling drywalled!

I went to Lowes on Friday night and picked up 10 4x8 sheets of half inch drywall. I backed the van right up to the front walk so that we could get going right away this morning. We hauled the sheets in as we needed them so as not to overly clutter things up.

Here is a "before" shot. Grace and I are just about to heave the first sheet up to the ceiling.

After briefly trying to man-handle a 4x8 sheet of drywall up against the ceiling joists and then attach it, we remembered that the last time we had installed drywall on a ceiling we had two kids helping us. Since there were no children available to press into service, we called Westside Building Supply in Lynden and rented a drywall jack. It looks like a medieval torture device but in actuality, after fire and the wheel, it is the greatest thing ever invented... This sped things up considerably (as well as saving our backs and shoulders.)

The drywall jack was terrific. I will never drywall a ceiling without one again! Here it is in action. We just tacked the sheets up along their edges because we had to get the jack back to Lynden by 4 p.m.
Finally, the fruits of our labors. We left the two foot strip open because we've got to shove insulation up there yet. We figure we can finish off these smaller sections without the jack.
So, after months of seeming inactivity, we are back in "addition mode". Hopefully by the end of next week Saturday, we will have it insulated and the ceiling drywall completed.

heading into fall (again...)

Ok, so I'll admit it - there's a bit more to this whole "addition thing" than we realized when we committed to it. But, we're past the point of no return and so we soldier on. We're not discouraged or anything, we've just had to revamp our deadline goals to adjust to the realities of lack of time, motivation, skill, etc. Regardless, we consider ourselves to be "on track". (No smart alecky comments please...)

As you might have guessed from the lack of blog activity, we had kind of a slow summer.(Someone asked me a few weeks ago whether I'd been having any "additional thots" lately.) We actually got quite a bit done. It only seems like we haven't been doing much due to no blog posts. Also, most of the things we completed were things I had already written about as if they were done. (You'll remember we are fairly notorious for not getting things "all the way" done.)

Our rough electrical is finished and has passed inspection as has our rough plumbing. We timed it so that the inspections were done at the beginning of autumn. This way we have a full six months before another inspection is necessary. That's something we've learned since last year - we won't need an extension for our building permit when spring arrives.

Currently we are putting up insulation and beginning to ponder punching a doorway into our exisiting house so that the addition can be accessed from inside during the winter. Right now we get in through a piece of missing wall beside the front porch. It will seem weird to be able to get to the addition without going outside. This way we can get some of the inside work done during the course of the winter. On the negative side, this means mess getting tracked into the house...

There you have it. Things are moving right along.... slowly but surely...