Insulating the Upstairs Attic

Thursday July 4th

We have a family reunion to attend this weekend. So instead of playing Thur, Fri and Saturday we decided to work Thursday and probably half of Saturday too. If possible we'd like to get more insulation for our attic on Saturday. It's only getting hotter!

Thursday morning we got up bright and early and got started. We had 34 pieces of sheetrock that are 4 1/2 ft wide by 12 ft long to unload from the trailer. These suckers are heavy! But we love them that we only get one seem in the middle of the walls instead of 2. We decided that since we had run out of the felt we might as well just hang the sheetrock on the ceiling instead. 

We worked and worked and worked. 

We got the entire ceiling done except for one piece we purposely left off so that Kory can climb up  in the attic and blow insulation on Saturday. 

We also hung sheetrock on the walls in the utility room. Hoping our mud guy can come next week to tape and mud. Then we can have our AC installer come back and install our 2nd unit. We wanted this room done before he installs since it's a pretty small utility room. We also hung 1/2 the bathroom walls too. Kory decided last week that we had better wait to blow in that wall until we had sheetrock hung above the shower. We've never done this blown in stuff before and he was a little worried about getting too much in the walls and then haveing problems with the sheetrock.

We are ready! Hunter and Maddie left at 4 and went to the St. George concert, Emily went to a bbq with a friend so it was just the 2 littles and Kory and I. They wanted DQ for dinner so we took them there and then came home and watched a movie. At 10:30 we drove up to the park to watch the fireworks with them. It was a good day! 

Saturday, July 6th

We spent yesterday at a family reunion. Decided to come back last night instead of camping in 100+ weather. We do that already at home. The kids wanted to stay with cousins so we let them but it gave us most of Saturday to work.  Kory took off to Cedar again to grab 2 palletts/36 bags of insualtion and the machine. 

Being we had done this once before we got right on it. We were able to insulate the attic of the 2nd story. Then we insulated the wall that goes around our storage in the attic. We also got the stairwell done. We had to run a few more wires from the panel box out in the garage to the kitchen. We wanted to get this done before we seal up the attic and make it a lot harder to get into. When Kory climbed back there he wasn't too impressed with the insulation job we hired out months ago for the first part of the house. Our AC guy told us from his experience a R-60 usually means that the majority of your duct work is under insulation. A R-49 means there about 1/2 way covered. Our ducts are mostly visible meaning we probably only have a R-39 which is what our current bid came in.  The thicker the insualtion is keeps the ducts cool during the winter or warm in the winter. Do we need it that thick? Nope! But everyhouse we have lived in over the past 18 years has had sucky insulation over all. We are always hot in the summer and cold in the winter without cranking the AC/Heater up and down. We've lived in many homes that you can feel a breeze. We are not doing that. We will be staying in this house for many years to come and we want it done right and effectively. And so we will probably be buying more bags of insulation to add to the attic. 

Breaking down our insulation bid to do the radiant foil, insulate the attic, attic storage area and exterior walls would have been $3337. We have done that all with a much higher R value and did the interior walls for a cost at $2429. True it would have only taken them one day to do it where it took Emily and I ALL day to felt plus another 10 hours of blowing in the insulation (4 hours of that was driving to Cedar back and forth to get our supples.) We are up almost a $1,000 from the bid and probably another $1,000 we were told due to the increase of R value and doing the interior walls. So we estimate we saved $2,000 by doing it ourselves in a good 2 days worth of work. Im thinking it was probably worth it to do it ourselves.   

Not very good at taking selfies but here I am!

We had a great day! It's awsome to know we can finally turn on our AC!