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I'm back. Updating piecemeal.
Last Wednesday, 03/03, we had insulation added to the walls of our house. I have an important tip for anyone who is considering this: do not, under any circumstances, believe anyone who tells you that the work crew will clean up afterward. Oh, they do their job, removing material and such. I'm not faulting the guys. But there's no way to make the house clean in less than a day's work after you've done something like that.
First the crew shows up and hammer-drills holes all over the outer wall. Every sixteen inches they make two one-and-a-half-inch holes, one near the top of the wall and one below the horizontal beam at chest height. For inhabitants of the house, having this drilling going on is like living inside a drum at a rock concert. I left and went to a job interview so I could relax.
Then they fire up a huge Anti-Vacuum-Cleaner that occupies most of the rear of their twenty-foot truck. With this, they blast chewed-up newspaper into all those holes.
I bet you think the inside walls of your house are pretty solid. Heh.
It is at this point that fluffy gray piles of insulation about the size of a small dog will appear inside the house near any place the electrical plates aren't flush, the paneling has a knothole, or the kitchen cabinets have old plumbing holes. The entire house and everything in it gets coated with a fine gray dust. In places, the air is thick with it. Before I left for the interview I couldn't quite see across my kitchen.
When I came home, it was getting dark, and the guys were still at it, working with big exterior lights. One guy was patching and spot-painting the holes on the outside of the house, while another guy had taken the Anti-Vacuum Hose in the door and up the stairs and up a ladder into the attic. It was jumping and twitching on the stairs as it fed insulation into the top of the house. This, too, is not a tidy process, but I'm not sure we could tell by then.
I opened up the little room where I'd confined the cats. The room was gray. The cats were gray. Their food and water were gray. A small gray dog sat next to the furnace. The cats were extremely insistent that I let them out of the room RIGHT. THIS. INSTANT. I brought them new food and water, at least.
After the crew was gone, I spent the next two days doing fascinating tasks like washing the couch.
Last Wednesday, 03/03, we had insulation added to the walls of our house. I have an important tip for anyone who is considering this: do not, under any circumstances, believe anyone who tells you that the work crew will clean up afterward. Oh, they do their job, removing material and such. I'm not faulting the guys. But there's no way to make the house clean in less than a day's work after you've done something like that.
First the crew shows up and hammer-drills holes all over the outer wall. Every sixteen inches they make two one-and-a-half-inch holes, one near the top of the wall and one below the horizontal beam at chest height. For inhabitants of the house, having this drilling going on is like living inside a drum at a rock concert. I left and went to a job interview so I could relax.
Then they fire up a huge Anti-Vacuum-Cleaner that occupies most of the rear of their twenty-foot truck. With this, they blast chewed-up newspaper into all those holes.
I bet you think the inside walls of your house are pretty solid. Heh.
It is at this point that fluffy gray piles of insulation about the size of a small dog will appear inside the house near any place the electrical plates aren't flush, the paneling has a knothole, or the kitchen cabinets have old plumbing holes. The entire house and everything in it gets coated with a fine gray dust. In places, the air is thick with it. Before I left for the interview I couldn't quite see across my kitchen.
When I came home, it was getting dark, and the guys were still at it, working with big exterior lights. One guy was patching and spot-painting the holes on the outside of the house, while another guy had taken the Anti-Vacuum Hose in the door and up the stairs and up a ladder into the attic. It was jumping and twitching on the stairs as it fed insulation into the top of the house. This, too, is not a tidy process, but I'm not sure we could tell by then.
I opened up the little room where I'd confined the cats. The room was gray. The cats were gray. Their food and water were gray. A small gray dog sat next to the furnace. The cats were extremely insistent that I let them out of the room RIGHT. THIS. INSTANT. I brought them new food and water, at least.
After the crew was gone, I spent the next two days doing fascinating tasks like washing the couch.
