Getting Gorgeous: New Walls For Our Dining Room

Greetings from rainy, grey Brooklyn! We just got in from rainy, grey Pennsylvania last night. We spent our rainy, grey weekend finishing up the insulation and drywall in the dining room. It was actually a two-weekend project. We started last week by installing some temporary fixtures to the dining room doorways:

The dining room is smack dab in the center of the house. Here’s a floor plan:

Even though we leave the windows and door open while we’re working, dust manages to find its way everywhere. We found ourselves dusting pretty much every day, especially in the kitchen. Dust even managed to get upstairs in the hallway and guest bedroom. How? No clue. But it was getting to be a bit much to keep up with. We found these tarp zippers at our local hardware store for $10 a pop:

Basically, they’re a zipper with a heavy-duty adhesive on one side. We stapled some plastic over the doorway leading to the hall and to the kitchen. Then we taped the plastic to the wall and floors to completely seal up the openings. After that, we taped the zipper to the plastic, unzipped it, cut a slit from top to bottom, and we have a plastic doorway:

It looks a bit like a Dexter kill room, but it works like a charm to keep the dust out. We did this for two doorways: the one leading upstairs and the one to the kitchen. We didn’t bother with the door that leads to the living room because dust wasn’t really getting in there to begin with.

Once we finished dust-proofing the doorways, we settled down for a nap on our ginormous radiator:

Not hammy enough? Here ya go:

We dragged the radiator out of the way and saw what was going on behind it:

All together now: ewwwwww…. Luckily that’s not mold we’re looking at. It’s crusty old wallpaper.

It’s the 7th or 8th different wallpaper pattern we’ve found in this house. We’ve lost track at this point. Either way, there was a whole lot of fugliness going on back there. And here’s what we found underneath the radiator:

A giant pile of dust and animal fur. Again: ewwwwww. That picture pretty much sums up why we’ve decided to make radiator boxes. We’re designing them to fit in with the overall look of our house and building them ourselves, so they’ll be more fancy-schmancy than the frumpy radiator boxes we’ve found in catalogs.

Speaking of frumpy, check out what the radiator did to the floor underneath:

We have a little patching and sanding to do. But first, we’re building walls. We started by removing all of the trim:

We talked about it a little in our last dining room post, but we’ve decided not to save and reinstall the old wood trim. The room feels so much more open without it. Once the trim was out, we built our walls.

This wall was, by far, the hardest:

Each rafter was slightly different, so the drywall had to be precisely cut to fit against the ceiling:

It was a bit like Tetris.

We were so geeked to tear down this old doorbell:

We’re guessing it was added in the ’60s or ’70s, and we’ve always hated the way it looks. So we’re replacing it with this:

It’s a small bell. Kind of a tiny version of the giant school bells that we had in our elementary schools. We haven’t installed it yet, but it’s going to look much more subtle than the giant creme-colored box it’s replacing.

Another thing we were super geeked about:

Saying buh-bye to that hideous floral wall border. We’ve been living with that ugliness for over a year now and covering it up was a happy-dance-around-the-room kind of momentous occasion. We may also have shouted “See you in hell, wallpaper!”

Check out our new, ugly-free walls. So fresh and so clean-clean! And so tall-tall, too:

To give some reference to the height of this room, Bradley’s just a bit over 5’10″. The room has always had taller-than-average ceilings, but we added about a foot when we exposed the rafters. With fresh, untextured drywall and no trim, the entire room feels so much bigger.

Here’s Bradley screwing in the last bit of drywall:

And, finally, here’s how the room looks now:

We love how the clean walls make the raw elements in the room pop. The rafters look so much better jutting out of a textureless wall:

And the spot where the rafters meet the brick looks so much better:

It’s finally starting to look more urban loft and a lot less country tacky.

We still have a lot of work to do before we can wrap this room up, though. We’re currently planning out how to replace the entry door:

It’s an old, solid wood door that would look great if we sanded and painted it, but we’re not going to keep it. It’s about half an inch thick and has the thinnest piece of single-pane glass known to mankind. Seriously. We might as well have a Kleenex separating us from the elements. This thing is doing nothing to keep us warm in the winter. So we’re shopping around for new doors. It’s not as easy as it sounds — all of the doors in our house are so old that they’re not standard-sized. Boo! Hiss! We might have to make or order custom exterior doors for the dining room and kitchen.

We have a lot of updates for you guys this week. We’re running in high gear right now so we’ll be posting more frequently. Whee! In our next post, we’re going to talk about our plans for the dining room doors:

That’s coming up tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Wrapping up some odds & ends.

Not gonna lie: this spending freeze is killing us. So far, we’ve had to make 4 trips to Lowe’s and Cole’s (our local chain). Our plan was to buy only what we absolutely needed to finish up outstanding projects — plumbing supplies for the hot water heater installation, for example. We stuck to our plan, even though it was really, really hard. After a few months of unchecked spending, our idea of what we absolutely needed got a little warped.

Part of our spending freeze plan is to wrap up the projects we’ve been putting off. (We posted a to-do list here.) That way we can move upstairs and start renovating downstairs. Our weekend was full of odds & ends projects, like putting up our DIY trim:

Bradley cut and installed the trim. Then he used painter’s caulk to seal up the crack between the wall and the molding. While he did that, I used wood putty to cover up the nail holes and seams:

Once the putty dried, we sanded it to a smooth finish and got them ready to paint. Then we moved on the radiators.

When we last left off with the radiators, we were in a bit of a bind. We wanted to replace our short, wide radiator with the tall, skinny one we swiped from our master bedroom. We needed to do a quick swaperoo of the fittings.

But — in typical home renovation style — we hit a snag. The fittings were on there so tightly that we couldn’t get them loose.

We even tried the heat-and-beat method, and it failed. On Sunday, we tried a different approach:

We set the skinny radiator down on its side. I stood on one end while Bradley used the pipe wrench on the other end.

At one point he was pushing down with all of his body weight with his legs dangling in the air. And then — finally! — the fitting came loose.

80+ years of grime makes for one serious glue! We did the same thing to get the fitting off of the short radiator. Then Bradley took the fitting from the short radiator and wrapped some Teflon tape around it.

This tape keeps the pipes from leaking but lets the connection stay removable. We won’t have to tighten the pipe to the point that we can’t get it off again.

Next, we put the new fitting into the skinny radiator and tightened it:

And then we used 2 giant pipe wrenches to turn the pipe around:

The opening used to face the other way. We turned it around to face the closet instead — that way we can put the skinny radiator in the corner and get it away from the window.

How we did it: Bradley was in the closet with one wrench, and I was outside with the other wrench. I faced away from the closet, braced myself against the wider radiator and let the wrench rest on my calves. Basically, my job was to not fall down. I had to stand there with the pipe against my legs while Bradley pushed his wrench towards me.

It took some seeeerious work, but eventually we got the sucker turned 180 degrees:

Then we carried the skinny radiator over to the pipe and screwed it in:

We stepped back to admire the fruit of our sweaty labors:

…and that’s when we realized the radiator is still too close to the window. Booo! Hissss! We’ll need to unscrew the radiator, scoot it to the left a few inches and use a pipe to cover the gap. Good thing the skinny radiator doesn’t weigh much. The short, wide radiator has got to be 300-400 pounds. We’re not really sure how we’re going to get it out of the guest bedroom. Or where we’re going to put it once we get it out. Details schmeetails.

After the radiators, we installed a ceiling fan in the guest bedroom. This means we no longer have a ceiling light and I couldn’t get decent pictures. But we decided to go ahead and tackle one more thing off of our list:

We picked up two heavy-duty closet poles for $20 a pop from Lowe’s and installed them in the guest bedroom. Bradley hung from them to test out how much weight they can hold:

That’s pretty much our criteria for anything we hang up. We even made up a verb for it: “Can you Monkey Bars it?” If we can Monkey Bar something, it’s solid. If we can’t, we add wall anchors.

We’ve been living out of cardboard wardrobe boxes since May 1st. No joke. So immediately after we finished putting the poles up, we moved all of our clothes upstairs. Then we tore the wardrobe boxes to pieces with our bare hands while laughing maniacally. Not really. Bradley carried them out to the garage so we can use reuse them as spray painting surfaces.

There’s one more project we wrapped up over the weekend:

While Bradley put up trim in the office and hallway, I painted all of the trim in the guest bedroom. We’ll take the official after pictures once we get the wide radiator out and clean up the floors. So exciting!

Also exciting: it’s Turkey/Tofurkey Day! We were so busy working on the house this weekend that we totally forgot to pick up our bird. We’re currently debating between taking the lazy route (frozen pizza) or pulling together a last-minute-feast-for-two (roast chicken and some simple sides). So far, the lazy route is winning. We’re taking Thursday off and then going right back to work on Friday. We’ll be back soon with all the updates. Hope your Thanksgiving weekend is more festive and less productive than ours!

Hot Water Heater

Happy humpday! The week is half over, and we’re still recovering from our work-filled weekend.

We’re on a spending freeze from hardware stores for the rest of the year. We’re taking the time to do odds and ends projects that we’ve been putting off. On Saturday, we installed a hot water heater. And by “we,” I mean Bradley. Because I was off playing with my new favorite toy:

I have a label maker. You know what this means, right? I’m one step closer to becoming a crazy cat lady. I can officially conquer the world. I’ll show you what I did with Labels McGee in our next post. It was exhilarating. I blew my nerd gasket at least twice.

Bradley started out by removing the staircase that leads up to our dining room. We’re sealing up this entrance anyway, so the staircase was a goner anyway. Besides, this guy hasn’t demolished anything in weeks:

He was itching to get his sledgehammer on.

Once the staircase was out of there, Bradley swept up all of the dirt and grime covering the cement floor:

He uncovered a secret message:

March 12, 1949. Which means our basement floor was poured nearly 63 years ago. Yipes. Definitely time for an update, but we won’t get to that until next year.

Next up, Bradley stacked a few cinder blocks in the spot where we wanted the hot water heater to go:

We wanted to elevate the hot water heater just in case we ever get water in our basement again. The cinder blocks are about 8 inches tall, so it gives us a little piece of mind knowing our new water-heating robot won’t drown.

Look at those googly eyes. Cutest robot this basement’s ever seen!

We got our GE GeoSpring back in September and it’s been hanging out in our basement ever since. We got it because it’s one of the most energy-efficient water heaters on the market. And, thanks to a tax credit and a rebate from our electricity company, this puppy cost us only $400.

With the water heater elevated, Bradley got to work on the plumbing.

We’re going to give a brief description of what we did, because a) a long-winded description would put everyone to sleep, and b) the details of what worked for us may not work for every house.

Bradley started by turning off the water main while I turned on all the faucets in the house. This relieved the pressure from the pipes. Next, he shut off our old boiler and started disconnecting the pipes to splice in the hot water heater. He measured out all of his pipes, cut them and then soldered them together:

I asked Bradley what he was doing in the pictures above and this is what he said:

You can say that I was soldering a ball valve. Not a gate valve. Because gate valves suck.

Straight from the horse’s mouth.

He also said that he “tied in the lines” and “spliced in the unit” and “installed a 30-amp breaker for the power feed.” And that, friends, is why I write the blog. Because nobody knows what a power feed splicing unit breaker is. Also, he’s more photogenic. And I have an irrational fear of getting swallowed up by big machines.

In about 3 hours, he had the water heater up and running:

We set it to hybrid mode. This means that it’s going to suck up the warm air from the room and use that to heat the water. It’s also going to use electric coils during peak times.

An added bonus is that it dehumidifies the air in the room. This means our always-muggy basement might finally dry out. And hopefully be less stanky in a few weeks. We’ll keep you posted.

Bradley insulated all of the water pipes in the basement. Here he is putting pipe insulation on the hot water line:

And the cold water line:

This improves efficiency because it keeps the warmth in the hot line and reduces condensation on the cold line.

Bradley also put gaskets around the basement door to help stop drafts:

That’s the only way in and out of the basement now. It needs a little….aesthetic help:

We’ll get to that eventually. Right now, we’re telling ourselves that it looks rustic and quaintly old-fashioned. We like to mix our Kool-Aid with equal parts denial and ignorance. That’s the juice that keeps us going!

We’ll be back soon with more updates on our weekend projects. Stay tuned, peeps.

—

What we learned from this project:

• This is Bradley’s fourth hot water installation, so he didn’t learn anything. Good thing I asked a lot of questions because I learned a lot.
• There might be a little air in the lines, but it’ll pass. Basically this means you might be in the middle of a nice, hot shower and suddenly get blasted with icy cold water. I speak from personal experience when I say this suuuuuucks.
• Before soldering, sand the pipe and the fitting. Shiny pipes are clean pipes. And that helps the solder stick.
• Make sure your pipes are totally drained before you solder. Otherwise it’ll produce steam that will keep the solder from absorbing into the joint.
• Apply flux to both pipe and fitting.
• Use MAPP gas, not propane, when soldering. MAPP gas burns hotter. (It’s the stuff that comes in a yellow tank.)

Chuckin’ Wood

A couple of months ago, we were driving somewhere when Bradley saw a woodchuck on the side of the road.

Bradley: “Oh mah gah, a woodchuck!”
Leena: “Where? What’s he doing??”
B: “Chuckin’ wood.”

I missed it. I always miss the wildlife. And I’ve never seen a woodchuck before, so for a second — just one second — I believed him.

L: “Oooooh, really??”
B: “…..”
L: “He wasn’t, was he?”
B: “You’re not going to live this down for months.”

I haven’t, either. It ain’t easy being a city kid in a small town.

On Sunday, I got my woodchuck on after our firewood guy dumped 2 cords in our driveway.

Bradley was working on some other projects, so I was the designated chucker. It was easy work. Chuck logs into the wheelbarrow, wheel ‘em over to the basement door and dump them there. Repeat a hundred times. Then chuck logs down into the basement. Repeat a hundred times. Then stack the wood into a neat little pile.

Wait. Did I say it was easy work? I meant exhausting. Here’s I didn’t know when I signed up for the job: wood is heavy. Really, really heavy. Each cord of wood weighs 2000+ pounds and we had 2 cords of wood to stack. It took over 7 hours to get our firewood from the driveway into a stack in the basement.

During the last 2 hours or so, Bradley came out to help me before it got dark outside. By the time we finished, my shoulder and back were dead. Hence the trip to the chiropractor yesterday. Now if only I could find a doctor to cure Claw Hands Syndrome. My poor fingers are still aching and sore from all the pick up / put down / pick up / put down action.

Enough rambling. Y’all wanna see pictures? We got your pictures right here:

We picked up a firewood rack kit at Home Depot. It comes with two metal brackets that attach to two 2x4s (sold separately). Bradley assembled it while I chucked wood. Here’s what it looks like after we stocked it:

We wanted something right outside the door so we won’t have to go into the basement every time we need a couple of logs. The rack is conveniently located between the kitchen door (on the left) and the dining room door (on the right). We won’t have to venture far in the cold.

By the way, our ariondack chairs and little patio table were stashed away in the garage for the winter. We’re still getting used to the idea that we have the room to stash things away now. It’s magic. *Poof* gone. …but not GONE-gone. I don’t miss the apartment life at all.

While I chucked even more wood, Bradley gathered together some wood we salvaged from the office. He hammered out all the nails and cut the pieces down to make a wall:

So glad we didn’t toss this wood out when we demolished the office. We had a feeling it would come in handy for something. We used it to section off an area of the basement to use for wood storage.

We didn’t really care how the wall looked because — newsflash! — our basement is creepy as all hell. It’s smelly. It’s humid. It’s dark. Remember when it flooded and looked like this?:

We’ve made peace with the fact that our basement is never going to be fabulous. It’s the place we store our water hater, boiler and firewood. Also, monsters might live down there. So we’re OK if our wall looks like it was made with leftovers. It fits right in.

Here’s what we had at the end of a very long day:

Those are two stacks of wood: one in the back and another right in front of it. We’re having another two cords of wood delivered and we’ll just stack those right in front.

We put an empty 5-gallon plaster bucket in the wood area as well:

That’s a place to toss any wood chips or branches that fall off. We can use those for kindling to start our fires — no more scrounging around for scraps of newspaper!

We put a little work into the rest of the basement, too:

We painted the rafters because we thought it might help harden / preserve the wood (it worked on the floors upstairs!). We used a basic white primer:

We also insulated the rafters:

We got fiberglass insulation with a vapor barrier on both sides. Basically it’s wrapped in plastic. It’s supposed to help keep smells out. Not sure about monsters.

So far, we’ve only painted & insulated the area under our dining room so far. We still have to do the area under our living room, but we wanted to wait to get this sucker out of the way:

That’s the new hybrid water heater we picked up a few weeks ago. We’re hooking it up on Saturday — so excited! — and our first order of business will be to test how hot our water gets. The old boiler / water heater never really got water hot — we’ve been taking mildly warm showers for the past 6 months.

You can see our old boiler creeping in the back behind the new water heater.

Judging by the color and type on this puppy, we’re guessing it’s as old as we are. We’re going to keep it around for a while because we need a backup heating system. That way, if we’re in Brooklyn and the thermostat drops below 50 degrees, the boiler can kick in and keep our pipes from freezing. We’ll replace it later on down the line with something that isn’t reliant on oil.

We’ll be back with more updates on last weekend’s projects. Stay tuned for that!

—

What we learned about chuckin’ wood:

• Bradley is super anal.
  Seriously. Nobody’s going to see this wall except us, but he still used a template to make sure all of the planks were placed perfectly apart. OCD anyone?
• Wear work gloves.
  I didn’t wear gloves at first and I got a few splinters and a couple of callouses within the first hour. Doh!
• It takes time.
  I wasn’t planning on spending an entire day hauling and stacking firewood, but that’s how long it took. Plan accordingly!
• It’s a workout.
  We. Were. Exhausted. Our arms, shoulders and backs were aching by the time we finished, and we’re still a little sore. Chuckin’ wood is hard work!

Getting fired up.

Meet the latest addition to our house:

Lets just go ahead and get this out of the way — the stove looks completely wonky. We didn’t install it ourselves because installation was included in the cost. And we weren’t around for the installation because the only available day was when we were in Brooklyn. The stove installer clearly does not have a discerning eye. Here’s what’s driving us nuts:

• They didn’t center the stove on the metal sheet underneath.
• The face of the stove isn’t level with the brick wall, so it looks cockeyed.
• They didn’t push the stove back far enough.
• The pipes are crooked. (We’re really not sure how they didn’t notice this one.)
• We asked them to not scratch up the metal sheet and they did. And then they tried to cover it up with….grease? Spraypaint? We’re not really sure.
• The paint on the pipes scratched off during installation.

We freely admit that we’re totally OCD control freaks when it comes to this stuff. We’re designers. It’s in our blood. But, seriously, look at how crooked that stove is:

Not OK. So we called up the stove company and complained. At first they tried to brush us off — it’s not that crooked, there were existing scratches on the steel, the paint didn’t scratch off that much — and we had to get a little New York on them.* We insisted they come out and fix the issue. And that we’d write out the check as soon as the stove was installed properly. That sped things right along and they’ll be back this week to fix the problems. Unfortunately while we’re in Brooklyn again, so we’ll see how it goes.

The moral of the story? If you want something done right, do it yourself.
Or suck it up and learn to live with shoddy workmanship. Whatever floats your boat.

Here’s what we’re loving about our new stove:

There isn’t a gaping hole in our brick wall anymore. That’s a huge plus.

It’s got pull-out “wings” that let you keep beverages warm! Coffee is basically the 3rd member of our renovation team, so we were downright giddy when we found out our coffee will never again go cold. Oh, and it’s pretty good at warming up the house, too:

While Bradley worked on getting the fire going, I took a few pictures of some furniture we haven’t shared yet. Check out our new coffee table:

You can see a couple of dining room chairs in the corner as well. There are four more of those stashed in the garage, and we’ll be designing a table to go with them. And then there’s this maple media console:

The coffee table, chairs and console are all from his company in Brooklyn. So is the tray on top of the media console. His boss gave us a generous employee discount and we took full advantage of it. The jute rug and the handles on the console are from IKEA.

The mix of woods feels like a bit much right now — everything is so loud! — but we’re not worried. Most of this furniture won’t live in the same room. It’s just sort of a hodgepodge situation until we can start actually furnishing rooms.

A few weekends ago, our friend Seryi visited us from New York. She brought us some love housewarming presents, including this:

A box of matches with a sketch of Brooklyn! So cute! At the time she said we’d probably never use the matches because they’re pretty obsolete. Joke’s on her. We’ve been using the matches nonstop since we got the stove:

Gotta love a gift that’s both adorable and practical. Thanks, Seryi!

Before we had the fireplace and attic insulation, our house was constantly freezing. We hated using our oil boiler for heat, so we set our thermostat at 59°F. We pretty much just bundled up and learned to live with it.

With the fireplace, we’ve been sitting pretty at a constant 68-70°F. Our boiler no longer kicks on. And, with the insulation, we’re retaining the heat we’re generating. We still have some old windows to replace and a lot more insulating to do throughout the house, so it’s only going to get better from here.

* New Yorkers have this amazing way of letting you know exactly what you did that is bothering them. It’s not rude and it’s not abrasive — it’s just very, very direct. Honest, almost to a fault. Coming from more passive-aggressive parts of the country, this took a little getting used to. And now we’re all about it.

—

Why we went with a fireplace as our main source of heat:

• Lumber’s a renewable resource.
  Oil? Not so much.
• We cut out the corporations and support a local business.
  One of the biggest reasons we went with a wood-burning stove instead of a pellet stove is that we don’t have to go to a big chain store and buy a packaged product. Our firewood guy lives in our town — he’s one of us. And when he delivers a truck-full of wood to our house, we know it hasn’t traveled very far. We love supporting local businesses!
• We have more control over where exactly our wood is coming from.
  You know us control freaks are waaaay into this one. The great thing about buying locally is that we can always source naturally fallen trees (as opposed to trees that are cut down for firewood).
• We can get our own wood if we want.
  We keep seeing ads in the local paper for “free firewood.” This is basically when a tree falls naturally (like during a storm) and the homeowner wants it removed from their property. They let anyone come in with a chainsaw, cut the wood to pieces and take it home for firewood. Bradley’s all over it — I think it’s mostly cuz he’ll take any excuse to use a chainsaw.
• We’re not reliant on electricity for heat.
  Pennsylvania just had a freak snowstorm that left tons of people without power for days. It’s nice to know that if we’re ever in that situation, we won’t rely on electricity for our heat. Bonus: we could actually cook on top of the stove if we wanted.
• It’s cheap!
  We talked to our firewood guy about buying 4 cords of wood. That should be more than enough to get us through winter. Since we’re buying in bulk, he cut us a deal and charged us $120 per cord. That means we’re spending a grand total of $480 to heat our house for the next 4-6 months.
• Nothing beats a fire on a cold, snowy night.
  Hot cocoa. Blanket. And a dog to snuggle with.

There are some downsides to relying on firewood for heat:

• We need a backup heating system.
  We’re in Brooklyn 2 days a week, which means we’re not there to build a fire. With all the insulating we’re doing, our house stays comfortably warm while we’re gone. But just in case it doesn’t, we have our boiler set to turn on if the temps drop below 50°.
• Firewood takes up space.
  It would be kinda tough to rely solely on firewood without having extra space to dedicate just for firewood. We’re basically using our basement solely for wood storage.
• Wood-burning stoves require attention.
  They need some tweaking every 6-8 hours to keep them burning all day. This isn’t a big deal for us because tending fires is totally Bradley’s jam. But it’s definitely not something that everyone would be into.

That’s it. We’ll be back soon with more projects and updates. Stay tuned!

Insulation blows.

We kicked off our Halloween weekend with a good ol’ fashioned panic attack. Why? Because this happened:

Ohhh, the horror!! How are we going to survive winter with an uninsulated attic?

OK, it’s not completely uninsulated. But it might as well be. There are only 4 inches of the fluffy stuff upstairs. That’s an R-value of approximately 9. Or basically nothing. With snow falling and temperatures dropping, we decided it was time to stop fighting the inevitable. We needed to insulate.

Once we insulate the attic, we won’t be able to use it for storage anymore, so we had to make sure and completely empty the attic. We also won’t be able to walk around the attic  anymore because it would crush the insulation. We had to figure out a way to access the wires and other stuff we might need someday. And, finally, we needed a way to insulate the entrance to the attic:

We started by building a ledge to keep the insulation contained:

Bradley showed me how to install baffles along the edge of the attic:

I took over that job while Bradley built the catwalk:

The catwalk is basically an elevated trail that we can crawl along to access anything we might need without disturbing the insulation.

Here’s how we sealed up the entrance:

We stacked two sheets of 4″ foam right on top of the ledge. That gives us an R-value of 20. The staircase leading up to the attic will also act as an air pocket and hopefully help retain some of our heat downstairs.

While we were working, we heard a rustling noise in the corner. And then a squirrel popped out out of the old insulation:

He took a few steps towards us and just stood there. But something was off. The squirrel seemed…drunk? He was teetering and his eyes were all droopy. Before we could figure out what was happening, he climbed back into the insulation and hid under the floor boards.

Bradley checked out the situation and it seemed like our new squirrel friend was napping. We gave him a few gentle prods with the end of a broomstick and he refused to budge. So we grabbed a hammer and pried the floor boards up to see if we could scare him out:

And that’s when we realized our squirrel was actually not napping, but dying. Rapidly. We got him out just in the nick of time. Poor little guy. We actually feel really lucky that he came out and warned us rather than just dying quietly under the floorboards. That could have been really gross and smelly.

On a less sad note, here’s how the baffles looked when finished:

After that, we used Great Stuff to seal up the cracks between the floor and the ledge:

Next up: insulating!

Before we rented the insulation blower, we measured out the square footage of our attic — it’s 950 square feet. Then we went to Home Depot to buy our insulation and pick up the blower. The rental desk employee helped us figure out how much insulation we would need to add another 12 inches to our attic. It would cost us $750. Not bad! Unfortunately the blower was checked out by someone else, so we went to Lowe’s instead.

This is where our whole squirrel-died-Home-Depot-was-a-bust day turned around. Lowe’s had a blower available. They also had a different brand of insulation that was formaldehyde-free. That brand ended up being waaaaay cheaper than the brand Home Depot carried. Adding 12 inches to our attic would cost us only $435 at Lowe’s! That’s $315 cheaper. Whee! We love saving moolah!

The only catch with Lowe’s was that we had to buy a minimum of 20 bags to get the blower for free. We only needed 15 bags to add 12 inches, so the other 5 bags would be extra R-value. We loaded up and drove home.

We had a 100-foot hose to work with, so we didn’t even have to carry the insulation upstairs. We just ran the hose along the banister and up the stairs.

The attic is dark and creepy and smelly, so I volunteered to load the machine while Bradley sprayed. I was a little worried that I’d somehow hurt myself. Maybe the machine would eat up my fingers. Maybe my sleeve would catch on a gear, and I’d get swallowed up.

Every project starts with me wondering if I’m going to fall into a machine and get eaten. It’s totally irrational. Especially when the blades are covered with an inch of soft rubber. So, I flipped the switch and let ‘er rip.

I fed the machine with a quarter block of insulation at a time. The blades fluffed up the insulation and blew them up to the attic where Bradley sprayed it in soft piles:

It looked like a winter wonderland up there.

The next step was to carefully clear the catwalk so we knew where it was:

Bradley used a small broom to gently push insulation off and to the sides. Here’s how it looked when we finished:

We started out with 4 inches of insulation and an R-value of 9. We ended up adding 16-20 inches. We’re not sure what the R-value is now, but it’s over 44. The recommended amount for our area is 38, so we’re geeked. And we can feel the difference already. The second floor used to be so cold, we couldn’t hang out there for long unless we were working. Now? Nice and toasty.

The whole process took us about 6 or 7 hours. It was one of the easiest, most mindless jobs we’ve done around the house. The hardest part was not getting bored to death. Even if you’re not handy, you can totally insulate your attic in a day. Best part: you’ll save a ton of dough. Check out our budget breakdown.

What we spent
20 bags of insulation = $580
Blower rental = $0

Grand total = $580 for more than R-44.

Cost of buying R-38 insulation at Home Depot = $750
We saved $170 by going across the street.

Cost of having Lowe’s install R-38 = $1,881
We saved $1,301 by doing it ourselves.

—

What we learned:

• Shop around.
  We got lucky that Home Depot didn’t have a blower available so we had to go to Lowe’s. We saved a ton of money. Check both places before you rent!
• Prep your attic the day before you rent your blower.
  On Saturday, we cleaned our attic, built the ledge and catwalk, and went to Lowe’s to pick up the insulation and blower. On Sunday, we insulated for 6 hours straight, then took the blower back.
  
• You will feel scratchy all over.
  It’s unavoidable. Wear long sleeves, pants and gloves. And, for the love of Pete….
• Wear goggles.
  We didn’t and we’re still regretting it. Our eyes are totally scratchy and raw.
• Dress your dog up for Halloween.
  It has nothing to do with insulating, but it’ll make you feel good. Trust us.
  

We’ll be back with some more updates on what’s going on in our casa. Hint: it’s getting hot in here. We’ll take off all our clothes. Not really.But at least we’re no longer going to bed in sweaters and wool socks. Stay tuned for that, coming up soon!

Flashback to June and sneak peak into October.

If you’ve been following the blog pretty consistently, there’s one thing you’ve probably picked up about us: we love a good deal. We also don’t believe in credit cards. Just like we don’t believe in leprechauns, unicorns and pixie magic, we don’t believe in Future Money. That’s our personal philosophy on money, and not a judgement on anyone else’s. We simply think we either have the money for a purchase, or we don’t. So sometimes we decide to make a big purchase and it doesn’t happen until we have the cash-money to pay for it.

Way back in June, we revealed that we wanted a fancy hybrid water heater — one that dehumidifies while saving the energy and the planet. It should really come with a superhero cape.

Source

Fast forward to September and we still hadn’t gotten our water heater. We had 2 very good excuses: 1) we’re crazy busy working on the guest bedroom / office / hallway upstairs so there’s no time for basement work, and 2) we were 67.5% sure it was going to go on sale soon. So we stashed away the dough for later.

Last week, we went into our local hardware store and bumped into Our Guy, known to the rest of the world as Ray. Ray loves Bradley. Bradley loves Ray. I love how his hardware store has free coffee and shiny things to stare at. Ray told us he’d been waiting all day for us to come in because it was time to buy the water heater.

GE just dropped the price by $300 and our electricity company just started offering a $300 rebate on hybrid water heaters. You just fill out a form and they send you a check. And  then there’s the $300 tax credit for buying an energy efficient appliance. Bradley gave Ray a big, fat kiss on the lips (not really), whipped out his wallet, and set up a delivery for this Friday.

Wanna know how much we paid? We’re happy to (over)share.

Original price: $1300
GE sale price: $1000
Minus $300 electric co. rebate: $700
Minus $300 tax credit: $400
Our final price: $400

Yup. We saved ourselves nine. hundred. smackers. Which, coincidentally just happens to be how much our next big purchase is going to cost us in October. (How’s that for a segue?)

We haven’t shared a view of our dining room yet because we haven’t done any work on it (we’re taking it one room at a time). Until now. Feast your eyes on this monstrosity:

Our dining room is currently our living room. And our living room is currently our bedroom. It’s a crazy-mixed-up world we live in. Here’s a breakdown of what we’re looking at:

That Hugh Jass hole in the wall wasn’t always there. It’s actually the first step towards renovating this room while simultaneously reducing our carbon footprint:

Source

That, my friends, is a wood-burning stove. We’re not sure if that’s the exact one we’re getting. We’re still in the shopping around phase. That one, though, is available at a farm supplier near us for $900 and we’re thinking about going with it.

We’ve been spotting old wood-burners in modern spaces more and more in lieu of brick fireplaces. There’s something about an old-timey cast iron stove that bring so much character to an otherwise modern space. It’s the interior design version of the Emeril Lagasse “BAM!”

So the hole in our dining room’s brick wall was to gain access to the chimney. Our chimney guy is making us a custom chimney liner so we can install a wood-burning stove in our dining room and use it to heat our house. We’ll still have our oil boiler to use as backup — in case the temperature ever drop below 50 degrees inside, our radiators will kick on and heat up the space enough to keep our plumbing from freezing when we’re not home. But for the most part, we plan on using good old-fashioned firewood to heat our home.

So our big purchase for September was the water heater we’ve been coveting and our big purchase for October is the stove / chimney liner / installation.

We’ve already started making a list of all the things we plan on redoing in the dining room:

• Expose the brick wall (the stove will sit in front of raw brick)
• Tear down the ceiling to expose the rafters
• Rip out the carpet, sand + paint the floors
• Make a dining room table
• Make a floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelf with window seat
• Tear down all the walls, insulate & put up new walls
• Replace 2 windows
• Replace or repair the door to the porch
• Paint the 3 other doors in the room (they lead to the hallway, living room and basement)
• Make a radiator cover

We won’t get started on that for a while. Next on our gut-renovation list: the laundry room / half bath. Then the kitchen. We have our work cut out for us!

What we learned last week:

• It’s good to hold back.
  We have a million purchases we have to make to get our house looking and functioning the way we want. If we tried to make them all at once, we’d be broke. Or worse: in debt.
• Our one room at a time rule helps us keep our sanity, more money in our pockets and a cleaner house.
  If we limit our purchases to only whatever we need to renovate 1 or 2 rooms, we’re not starting projects all over the house and causing construction messes everywhere. We’re also not wasting money and space by hoarding supplies for projects that won’t get started till Spring 2012. Win-win situation.
• Know when to make exceptions.
  The stove and water heater are exceptions to the one room at a time rule. Our old oil boiler is really inefficient and really expensive — and winter is right around the corner. Both purchases also have the added benefit of alleviating our hippie-guilt over being reliant on oil.
• This is not the first wood-burning stove in our house.
  Way back in the 1880s, when our house was a young’un, there was a stove hooked up in the dining room and it was definitely used for cooking. The dining room / living room areas are the “old” part of the house. The kitchen area was added later (we’re thinking the 1920s-30s). So weird to think that someone used to cook their meals where we now watch TV.
• Confession: even though we’re very anti-credit card, we still use ‘em.
  When we  have the cash-money to make our big purchase, we put it on a credit card that gives us airline miles. Then we pay them off right away. Sometimes before it’s even due, because we’re anal like that. We’re saving up miles for a trip after the house is done. (Thailand, here we come??)