The estimated cost for getting all of that into better shape was astronomical (at least to us). So we ended up getting the crawl space taken care of because it seemed more pressing due to a minor amount of mold that we wanted to avoid turning into a major amount of mold.
That left our heat-and-AC-leaking attic to contend with. Good thing we have a Richard around here who knows all about the best ways of adding insulation to an attic.
He rented an insulation blower (this one) and bought twelve packs of the corresponding insulation (this stuff). Actually, the rental for the insulation blower ended up being free because he bought enough of the insulation.
Our attic pre-insulation:
And after our hard work:
So, I actually didn't get that many "after" pictures. But it basically all looks like that one "after" picture. Just add pink, fluffy stuff to all of your mental images of our attic.
This is one of those jobs that Richard would normally just tackle on his own -- as in, it falls into the category of him knowing all about it and me knowing nothing about it, so he would just do whatever he needed to get it done.
But this time he got a helper: me! He needed to get the job done in a certain amount of time in order to get the rental returned. And he accepted my help when I offered.
The hardest part (for me, at least) was getting all of the stuff up the front steps, into the house, up the stairs to the second floor, and then up the attic stairs. The insulation is pretty heavy even though it just looks like tightly-packed cotton candy. And the machine was really heavy. And cumbersome.
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| What toilet? |
I got nominated for (and accepted) the job of cutting the giant bales of insulation in half, removing the plastic and shoving them into the insulation-block-shaped hole that separated it and fed it through the tube to be blown out wherever Richard deemed appropriate.
It was much harder than I anticipated, but, man, I was going to work my butt off to be the best assistant-attic-insulator ever!
While I was assisting (maybe it was before and not during since those blocks of insulation look to be fully intact), I found a large, bathroom mirror that we're storing in the attic (?). I think this must have been back before the national championship when I felt compelled to show that we were number 1 (as in, actually, truly, factually number one). Anyway, go tigers!
