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!

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.  

Insulation Felt

Thursday, June 27th

Our bid for someone else to do the insulation wasn't very impressive. Being it can get pretty hot here it was reccomended by a few contractor friends, "google" and insulation websites to have our attic blown in at a R-49 to R-60. The hotter/colder the climate the larger number we needed to have a energy effecient home. Although we requested this the bid was only for a R-39. We needed the little wall that will go around our attic storage insulated too. The bid showed bats instead of blowing it in, also not what we asked for.  For our exterior walls we were told to do a R-30, the bid was for R-21. We will also need the last half of the garage blown in and downstairs in the future kitchen, office and master bath/closet. The total bid came in at $5856 and it wasn't what we were asking. We wanted more! We want an energy effecient home. So after a few phone calls and watching YouTube Videos we decided to do it ourselves so we know what we are actually getting. 

Kory and I headed to Home Depot and Lowes to see what we could do ourselves. If we bought 30 bags of insualtion (approx 1,000 sq ft) we could rent the blower for free for 24 hours. Unfortunately neither store carried the felt. It could be ordered for us but wouldn't be here until mid July. It's over 100 degrees upstairs. It's close to 90 downstairs when we go to bed. It's hot and we've got to do something! So we ordered the felt off of Amazon and ended up spending about $50 more. Not to bad.

Our felt was delivered Wednesday night! So Kory and I hung the felt by ourselves in one of the bedrooms/closet. Took us a minute to figure out a "good" system but we got it.  On Thursday Emily and I hung the felt on the rest of the walls upstairs. Hunter was gone all week at EFY and Maddie was at a cousins house for the week. Being just Emily and I it took us a little longer than it did Kory and I but we did it. After working 10+ hours the upstairs was complete! 

I never did get a picture of the final project. Emily just couldn't hold the roll on top of our tall ladder tight enough for us to get the ceiling so we waited for Dad to come help. It was an exhausting, hot day but so happy to know we should beable to turn on our AC this weekend!

Back Patio

Friday, June 21st

We worked really hard each night this week getting ready for concrete and doing more wiring upstairs. To say our family is tired is an understatement. We're tired of working on a daily basis, tired of living in a construction zone, tired of the constant messes, tired of living on top of each other and out of boxes. tired of turning down friends when invited to do "fun" things because we are always "working on the house". We are just TIRED! And so this week when we were invited to go to the cheap theater and see Dumbo and then to dinner on Thursday night we said, Yes! We worked a little longer Mon-Wed evenings and the kids helped a little better knowing our reward was coming Thursday night.  And what a great night it was! 

Friday morning, the cement truck was suppose to come at 6:30am. At 6 we got the text the cement truck wouldn't be there until 10. And then at 7:30 I heard the truck arrive! Not sure what happened! But glad it came. 

Kory had an install that morning and had left thinking the truck wasn't coming until 10. Luckily, our concrete guy had brought his Dad and an employee to help. Near the end Kory was able to make it back to help a little bit. He just left his guys on the job site to keep working while he came back to help. 

Oh my goodness it looks good. We decided to run it the whole span of the house and a little wider than we had originally thought. And so it ended up being 10ft wide by 50ft long. We are going to love it! One day when the inside is more complete we will build the awning that will go overhead. I'm already dreaming of our outdoor kitchen, eating outside and just sitting and watching my kids jump on the trampoline, running on the future grass and playing basketball. 

One day..... 

Saturday June 22nd 

Oh how it's getting hotside! It is time to buckle down and get insulation. There's just a handful of things that need to get done before we can do that. I havn't had a phone/camera this week and I don't take selfies anyways but the girls and I were able to finish wiring all the can lights on Saturday while Kory, Hunter and our friend Daniel started on the plumbing and framed in our attic storage area. 

Kory started on the plumbing. He was installing the pvc pipe that will be the vent for the upstairs bathroom. Once he got going he realized he wasn't going have the right parts to finish it that day.  So he did what he could and then he moved on. 

Then we began on the attic!

Kory framed up the 2 walls.  We cut more foam boards and shot them to the back of the framed wall just so our storage area will be insulated too. And this will keep all the "blown in" insulation out of our way and in the actual attic. Eventually Kory will build a total of 3 cabinets and he'll install them where he framed them in.  Below is the the finished, cleaned up project. On this side of the stairs we will have a total of 3 cabinets.  On the other side of the stairwell we will only have one cabinet. We ran out of day light and energy to do that side. We also realized we need to pull a few more strands of wire that we'll need for the kitchen and shed outside. We want to get that done before we close off the storage area. We are also about out of wire. So we took off to Home Depot to grab some. They were out! For reals? The Home Depot across town was also out! The next closest one would have been in Cedar and we didn't want to go that far and they would have been closed by the time we got there anyways. And so we didn't get as much done as we would have liked on Saturday but we did get a good day's worth of work done. It's one more day closer anyways....... 

We have to keep telling ourselves everytime we work on the house that it's 2 or 8 hours less of work to do then if we hadn't worked at all. Both Kory and I were feeling a little discouraged Sunday morning. We worked all day the day before and we had a friends help! Yet it looks like so little had been accomplished. We both know we are getting closer and closer but we still have so much to do. Sometimes I wonder if it ever will be done......

Side Note:
It's been hard to take pictures lately. A month ago I put my phone on the charger. After a few hours I went in to grab it. It was super hot and the phone wouldn't turn on. Pretty sure it got fried! So Kory ordered me a new phone. I just went without for a few days. New phone came and I quickly discovered that the dang phone wouldn't hold a charge. After responding back and forth with the seller I was finally told to send it back. And so I continued to go without a phone. I still don't have a phone today. Just waiting on my refund before purchasing a different one. And so our pictures lately are curtesy of my girls and their ipod's!

Windows Are Here

Saturday, June 15th we only had 1/2 a morning. We took our family to Manti to see the Mormon Miracle Pageant. This is the last year this big production will be performed. We had an awesome day/night as a family and away from the house for just a moment. 

Before we left Kory was able to wire the 2 can lights that are in the stairwell. He also had to run a few lines of a different wire for our future A/C unit. 

While we were gone Saturday our A/C guy came and began running our unit. His supplier shorted him on some of the materials so he wasn't able to finish. Hopefully he can come back this weekend and finish.

Monday, June 18th 

Kory and Hunter went to the shop to work at 6am. They both came back about 2 hours later. One of our employees had thrown his back out over the weekend and called in sick. The other left a message at 3am on Kory's voicemail saying he had gotten sick during the night. So knowing Hunter had some school work (doing a summer online class) and Kory had computer work to catch up on they came home.  After a few hours of sitting in front of his laptop Kory needed a break.  He decided to help our cement guy get ready for our back pork to be poured hopefully later this week. 

First thing he did was level the ground and push all our trash into one big pile. Over the past few weeks we have taken 10+ loads away. We have paid the dump about $500 and we decided we didnt' want to spend anymore money that way. And so we borrowed a garbage can from my parents so that each week we can load 3 garbage cans full of trash and let the garbage man take it to the dump for us. It's going slow but we are making progress. 

 

The back pad is leveled and ready to be formed up. 

It has been so rainy this Spring/early Summer. This is what my back yard looked like 3 days after it had rained last. Our house is just surrounded by mud! It's terrible. 

And so after the pad was ready Kory just kept on going. He ended up getting 4 loads of AB rock. He leveled all our mud ruts we've made with our cars and laid it out nicely so we won't get quite as muddy as we have been getting. 

We've got some right in front of the shed. So now we can get the quads out without worrying about the mud. 

He almost got the whole side of the house too. At least the back yard, the shed and the house side door won't be quite so muddy. One day in the "far" future we will acutally pour a cement pad all the way to the shed. We'd love to put a basketball hoop above the shed and have a nice little spot to play some family ball. 

He also put some more in front of our garage and driveway. We have had it here before but when we dug the water line to the back yard it got all torn up and moved. I love that it's not so "all dirt" and will help with our mud problem.  

Kory did an amazing job!

At 4:20 Kory got the call that our windows had come it. Yay!!!

We took off to grab them before they closed at 5. We got there just in the nick of time. When we got home Kory called my Dad asking if he'd come help us intall them. I had to run to Cedar to pick up Emily who had spent the day with her Grandma working on one of her 10 hour YW projects. By the time I got back they were installing the last one.  

 This is the privacy one that was hung above the master bath. 

We only have one window left to install.

However we shoved the swamp cooler through it last week to help us cool the house down at night. We don't have it hooked up to water so it just moves the air for us at night which has really helped.  

 Once our A/C unit is up and running we can install this last window and turn that bad boy on. It will be so nice! We are hitting the high 90's outside and so it has become an every day occorunce for our house to be 85+ come about 4pm each day. It's hot! It wipes out our energy and everyone becomes a little testy with each other not being able to escape the heat. We are all so looking forward to be able to use a AC unit. We haven't had AC in 3 years! Our swamp cooler has done a decent job until about mid July-August when our temperatures are over 110. It's just too hot. Having AC is a luxury that I hope our family will remember for a long time!

Starting the Electrical

The past 2 weeks have been a bit busy! The older girls and I were gone for 4 days to girls camp. Then this past weekend the older 2 and I were gone for Youth Conference. Although we haven't been around to work every single night I'm still impressed with how much we have accomplished. 

Wanting some storage areas Kory framed a few more cupboards into the stair case. We're going to have a nice large cupboard on both sides! The opening is framed in. One of these future nights we'll get the boxes built for them. I think we'll really like them. 

Before starting on the electrical we needed to finish insulating the walls with our foam boards. On this Friday, June 14th it was a all hands on deck kind of day. All 7 of us had jobs to do and  we worked really well together. 

The younger kids could drag the boards in and help hold them while Kory cut them into our strips. 

Then the strips were taken to the walls and placed between each stud. 

After they were in we nailed them a few times and sprayed foam around the edges to block air movement. 

It's getting pretty warm outside which means it's getting pretty warm inside. We haven't turned on our A/C yet becuase once again we have too many holes. We've got 4 windows that we are still waiting on plus an open attic. It can get quite miserable in the afternoon evening time before the sun sets enough and we can open windows. Hoping all this insulation will help a little bit. 

When the foam boards were finished up stairs we sent the boys downstairs to finish. Kory, the girls and I began wiring the upstairs. While the girls and I were away at girls camp he and the boys had installed most of the electrical boxe; fan, canned lights, light switches and smoke detectors. So we finished the few that still needed done and the began running wire.  

Kylies job was to help pull the wire off the reel.

 And then Kory, the girls and I would pull it throught all the holes he drilled through the studs and push them into the electrical boxes. It's not really hard work just a little time consuming. 

All of the electrical boxes have wire to them. 

Woo Hoo!

We also seem to have bad luck with wireless electronics. In every single house we've been in we've had something that was wireless NOT work and had to hard wire it to use it. Having the material already we decided to hard wire almost every room. Although we don't allow electronics into the kids rooms we may rent the house out long term one day or use it as a vacation rental. One day in the future it might be nice to beable to have all the hard wire available to us.  Nice to know that wire is now done too. 

One of Kory's and my biggest pet pieves is having towel rods in the bathroom that fall off the wall. Why is this? We've rented a lot in our 17 years of marriage and most of the places we've rented has had this issue. The rods are always loose. And if you look closely enough you can see a ton of screw holes where the rod had been previously. It just keeps getting moved a little each time the rod falls and screwed back in some where else. The problem is that the towel rod isn't being screwed into the actual studs in the wall or maybe one side is but not the other. It's just going through the sheetrock. So with extra material laying around we fixed this little problem. Kory screwed some large and thick pieces of wood (left over staircase stringers) between the studs. This way when the time comes to hang towel rods it won't matter where we put it along this wall. We will hit real wood instead of just sheetrock. That rod isn't going to go anywhere for a very long time! We also put a piece of extra wood where the hand towel by the sink will be too.  

We're getting pretty excited to see how quick the house is coming along! 

Sure is looking good.

Stairs

The upstairs is almost completely framed in. Just a few odd's and ends to finish up. I love that it's coming along so good. Our current issue with working upstairs is we don't have stairs to get up there. We either have to go outside and climb up a ladder into an upstairs window or we do have this small opening in my kitchen that we can again climb a ladder to get into. It's a little difficult to get tools and materials up there. 

And so before we finish anything else upstairs Kory decided it was time to build our stairs. We knew this was going to be the next "major" project. It took us a full week to get them in. 

He had to cut some of the new and old trusses and then reinforce them.

That whole in the ceiling that we cut out will be the stair opening. 

A friend, Ben Sorenson, came over and helped Kory cut the stringers out. This took hours! They measured, re measured, calleda mutual friend who is a contractor to confirm, re measured, called a different friend who has lots of stair experience to confirm, re measured and then finally cut them!

Once the stringers were cut and installed things finally began to move a bit more quickly. 

Kory and Hunter screwing the treads on. 

Maddie starting to clean up the mess of this day. 

What a project this was. I knew it was going to be time consuming having to reinforce the old and new trusses, moving insulation aside and previous wiring and building the strucutual post at the bottom to help hold the weight and the actual stairs. But I had no idea that it would take us the whole week working 2 full Saturdays and a few hours each night. Man am I glad that's done!

  

Got to say, it is so AWESOME to have stairs we can use to get up and down on.