Insulating The Upstairs Walls

Friday, June 28th

This weekend our goal is to get the upstairs insulated. The walls, attic, everything so we can turn on our AC. Before we could put the felt or sheetrock on the ceiling Kory wanted to hang up a foil radient barrier. This stuff is suppose to bounce the heat off our house, keeping our attic cooler. My parents did this in their house and are glad they did. They say their electric bill is always less than others in the neighborhood. To them it was totally worth it. The bid to do this alone in our insulation bid was $1125. We bought one roll and we have more than half left for $55.80. We also used a box of staples which was another $10. Not to bad!  I won't lie, it was a pain to hang/staple this stuff to the trusses. On both edges of the house we had to cut the foil and staple it around each truss.

Our attic space is not big! So we had Brayden crawl up there and drag the foil down the house for us. It went a bit quicker with his help. 

 It wasn't hard just very time consuming and we were working with our hands over our heads the entire time. We did 2 runs down each side and then one in the middle. I seriously hated every moment of it. I was sweaty and it was seriously dripping off my chin. My arms hurt and my fingers were numb having to use the manual stapler. Brayden was using the electrical one since he didn't have the strength to use the manual one. It took a while but we finally got it. I just hope it's worth it. It's kind of an optional thing. We've got friends who install it on all their personal and spec homes and then we've got friends who have never installed it. Go figure.....

Kory and Kylie also finished the plumbing in the upstairs bathroom. 

Friday afternoon Kory took off to Cedar to grab the insulation and machine from Home Depot. The one here was broken of course. When he got home Brayden and I were done with our jobs so it was time to finish hanging the felt on the ceiling so we could start blowing it in. 

We got 2 runs of felt on the ceiling when we ran out. Kory didn't realize that Emily and I were already on our 2nd roll. We had ordered another roll a few days prior knowing we were going to run out but it hadn't come yet. Originally we were just going to insulate the exterior walls. After talking to some friends we decided to also insulate the interior walls for a sound barrier to. Which is why we knew we were going to run out and had ordered more. Talk about feeling despair again. Really? Here we are with 30 bags of insualtion, a machine for 24 hours and we can't even finish what we started? So, so frustrating! We don't have to have felt on the ceiling we can do sheetrock but...... we don't have any and Home Depot/Lowes doesn't sale the bigger pieces we like and it's more expensive. The place we usually buy it from was closing and there was no way we'd make it there in time. The frustration was real that night. We decided to walk away and start again in the morning. 

Saturday June 29th

Although we had wanted to start with our attic and work down we decided to do what we could with what we had. So we started with the walls. It was so easy! Kory poked a hole into the felt, stuck our pvc pipe he screwed to the end of the  hose and filled the bays. 

The machine was super simple to run, just had a on and off button.

The only issue we had was that the pvc pipe we were using was building up stattic electricity and kept shocking Kory. At first it started just a little bit, but it gradually got stronger. When it shocked him I could see the sparks and it would hurt. It was crazy! We kept stopping for him to add a gound to the pipe to absorb the electricity. Nothing was working. We finally took the super thick cardboard tube that the felt had been wrapped around and used it in its place. No more shocks. 

In 3.5 hours we had every wall upstairs insulated and they are full! We are getting that R-30 we wanted. As I had mentioned earlier at the begining we weren't planning on doing the interior walls and so we forgot to add more insulation into our calculations. We ended up using all 30 bags upstairs in the walls. The insulation cost us $976.82. So far it's cost us $1375 and we know we are getting what we want!  When we got back from Cedar we had a package on our door. It was that 3rd roll of felt! Oh well..... Kory had to go talk to 2 clients about an upcoming cabinet job and so we called it a day. It is so awesome to see the progess we made this weekend. We went ahead and turned the AC on for a few hours that night. It felt so good! We turned it off in the morning and then turned it back on after church on Sunday. We've got it set at 76 and it feels so good inside! I can't wait till we can leave it on.