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Attic Insulation

I think insulation, or the lack thereof, is always a big issue with these old homes. Our home, like so many others, has none. When we redid the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room we were able to put insulation into the walls at that point. All other rooms as well as the attic and crawl space remained open territory – the perfect openings for all of our heat to wander off through.

It doesn’t help that I like warm temperatures. In the summer I’ll always carry a jacket with me because I know any place I go – the grocery store, a restaurant, someone’s house – I’ll end up freezing. That also means I like to crank up the heat in the winter time to feel nice and snuggly warm. As the temperatures started dropping in the fall we generously turned on the heater. As it got colder the bills got higher and we adjusted the thermostat to more conservative measures. Then we got another higher bill. We adjusted even more conservatively. And the bill came in higher again. I know as the months went on and the temperatures kept dropping that the bills would go up, but it was weird nonetheless that the more we tried to be thermostat conscious, the higher the bill ended up getting.

A few weeks ago, after having received a second bill that was creeping towards the $400 mark (!!!) we said it was time to cough up the money for some insulation. Throughout the winter we had talked to various neighbors discussing their attic insulations and we knew we needed it too. Now we just knew we really had to get it done. (Of course…just in time for spring and temperatures going up – aren’t we so smart!)

Today we got it done! I had to dig through some old pics to find some of the attic pre-insulation. Here’s Patrick trying to make use of the 3 left over pieces of insulation last March…

Attic insulation

And here’s the attic after today. A winter wonderland! Not sure how much the bills will change this year, but next winter I better be seeing some savings on those gas bills!!

Attic insulation

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Slow Progress

There hasn’t been super much progress lately. Now that the weather is so incredibly nice we’ve mostly focused on the exterior work. We’ve been mowing the lawn, cleaning up the never ending leaves left over from fall (hey, in the fall we were worried about moving into the house, not the leaves in our yard). I’ve uncovered things like the flower bed by the front porch, etc.

Now that the carpet is in the laundry, and while we have all the junk out of the room, we managed to paint the majority of the room. We still have to finish the very back corner.

Paint laundry room

During our yard cleaning we decided to also clean out our shed, which included a large pile of left over insulation. Since we paid for it we figured we may as well put it to use, so I drug them up the attic where Patrick then spread them between the beams.

Attic

This evening we planted our very first plant! It’s a Yoshino Flowering Cherry tree that has absolutely gorgeous pinkish-white flowers in the spring. Wow, we not only own a house, we own our very own tree too! Haha. :-P

Plant Yoshino tree

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