On and on

Saturday, outside:


Saturday, where we were:


Forgive the self-pitying tone of that title. I actually am quite happy to report that we have only one major task remaining in our crawlspace, after another one of our famous Saturdays in Hades. This time we finished out the task of putting up denim insulation under there--not at all a complicated job, just uncomfortable and slow as crawling is wont to be. (The one remaining thing will be to put up rigid insulation on all the exterior walls, at which point we will have altered basically every surface under there.)

As we worked, cutting the pieces and dragging them in and stuffing them up between the joists, our cat was right outside the crawlspace entrance, hunting moles. She was staring straight down into a pair of mole holes, waiting for them to venture out, and she caught at least two this way. From the point of view of someone spending a lovely Saturday crawling in the dirt, this was not reassuring.

Anyway, we got that done at last, staggered outside, ripped off our masks and goggles, and asked ourselves, What next? We needed supplies for almost anything we could have done with the rest of the day, except to just keep insulating. All the radiant tubing meant to heat the attic needs the denim insulation too. Then, above the bathroom and kitchen (which make up the one-story part of our house) needs to be insulated as well. We wondered if there was any way to do this in the kitchen considering we have no ceiling there yet. Decided no, not really. But we could do the bathroom.

This meant going up to the attic and squeezing ourselves into the little wedge-shaped space under the main roof, then trying to push a batt of insulation forward into the even smaller wedge-shaped space under the rear roof. It was funny to see the top of our bathroom ceiling from here: the bathroom, like any room, is really just a box within the larger volume of our house, made of fragile drywall. John wiggled forward, avoiding hazardous nails above and below, and used a long stick to poke the stuff toward the end. It was not easy. My job wasn't so bad--I got to do the last bay on the end, the one that you can get to if you put a ladder right outside the bathroom door and climb up so your head pokes over the top of the bathroom wall.

So that was done, and we moved onto the dining room. People, we're as bored of this stuff as you are. Believe me. You should just read John's post for Sunday, a much more exciting day in many ways, and forget about all this repetitive, watching-your-life-slip-through-your-fingers insulation crap.

So we insulated the dining room, raining borate into our eyes and our living space. Then John mopped up and we ate tacos for dinner.

- Erika