The blues

All postlessness aside, we have actually been busy. Did some not-too-interesting stuff on Monday: insulating the manifold as it travels upstairs through our bedroom closet and across the ceiling, plus other loose ends. Just want the house to be tight--as tight as it can be when it's almost entirely uninsulated in the exterior walls. I always find it mind-boggling that houses were built without insulation at a certain point in time; we're looking into that blow-in soy insulation, sometime when we have a few Gs to drop.



Tuesday we started on the denim insulation, which is the second major stage of insulation that goes under all the radiant tubing. While we were at work it had gotten delivered and the 10 bulky bundles were filling our front porch. We've worked with this stuff before, so we were familiar with both the cost (which does, um, add up when you're buying 900 square feet of it) and the fact that, eco-friendly though it may be, you have to wear a mask and goggles when installing it. It's treated with borate which is not comfy for the eyes or the lungs.

So, we got suited up, started measuring and ripping and stuffing and pushing in those metal rods that fit between joists to hold the batts up. Did most of the basement Tuesday night.





Wednesday I was busy entering my thirties.

Thursday, after a highly irregular after-work glass of champagne, I dragged myself into the middle crawlspace--we're getting close to saying goodbye to that bastard crawlspace, really we are--and John passed 10 batts to me over the footer, then came in with me and we put them up. Took a brief break to convince our cat not to hang out right next to the road staring at an interloper cat (unsuccessful). Talked ourselves into doing another 5 batts.






We're looking at another weekend of crawling, some hookups on the furnace end, this and that, and we'll be filling the tubing and firing this puppy up! Luckily, global warming has kept us toasty so far this autumn.

- Erika