I feel like George Bush. The George Bush that stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner. Like Dubya, my mission is nowhere near completed, but a bit of premature celebrations seemed to be in order. The reason, you see, is that WE HAVE HEAT!!! Of course, the rest of the house isn't done, not even remotely, but it's a big deal and if I had a banner that large, I'd think about displaying it too.
Since my last, and long ago post(sorry, there is just so much to do), we finally had our mini-split heat pump installed. Of course, we can't actually use it due to the increasingly alarming amounts of dust in the air from regular operations. But even wrapped in protective garbage bags, it's nice to see there on the wall. Even better is that we had our wood stove installed a couple of weeks ago. Big news indeed. Moira found us the perfect little insert made by the good folks at the Osburn wood stove company in Quebec (I've been calling it Ozzy Osburn to little or no reaction from anyone). It works really well and even during nights when it has hit -20, it has been warm enough in front of for me to accidentally fall asleep at times, don't tell Moira.
More recent news brings in the title of this post. John and Mark came by again to lend some much needed hands to the project. The plan called for blown-in insulation in the attic and knee walls, but for that to happen, we needed to install vapour barrier and drywall on the ceilings and the boys came to get that done. An extra couple of hard workers really helps things along. A few hiccups on the first weekend (from my lack of readiness) led to big progress but an incomplete job, but John came back for a second day of drywalling and we now have R-50 insulation above us. Putting in the insulation is kind of fun, instead of spreading it by hand, we used a cannon that expels the pink fiberglass insulation bits. I guess it is more of a hose that pukes insulation than an actuall cannon, but it is still fun. It did result in some uncomfortable moments for me in the attic though. The attic is not actually high enough for me to do anything but belly-crawl and the insulation needed to be at a depth higher than my head in that position. Good times and not for the claustrophobic. If you can't belly-crawl backwards while dodging nails sticking through the roof fast enough, the rising pink tide could swallow you up, never to be found again until some other overly-enthusiastic people try to renovate this house.
A few other significant things have happened, but that is enough for now. So while we're not done, we've taken a giant leap forward. So I won't hoist the big banner for a long while yet but you'll forgive me if I'm feeling a bit ecstatic at the moment (mostly because my fingers have thawed in front of the wood stove enough to type "ecstatic").
A few more photos below for your perusal.
Since my last, and long ago post(sorry, there is just so much to do), we finally had our mini-split heat pump installed. Of course, we can't actually use it due to the increasingly alarming amounts of dust in the air from regular operations. But even wrapped in protective garbage bags, it's nice to see there on the wall. Even better is that we had our wood stove installed a couple of weeks ago. Big news indeed. Moira found us the perfect little insert made by the good folks at the Osburn wood stove company in Quebec (I've been calling it Ozzy Osburn to little or no reaction from anyone). It works really well and even during nights when it has hit -20, it has been warm enough in front of for me to accidentally fall asleep at times, don't tell Moira.
More recent news brings in the title of this post. John and Mark came by again to lend some much needed hands to the project. The plan called for blown-in insulation in the attic and knee walls, but for that to happen, we needed to install vapour barrier and drywall on the ceilings and the boys came to get that done. An extra couple of hard workers really helps things along. A few hiccups on the first weekend (from my lack of readiness) led to big progress but an incomplete job, but John came back for a second day of drywalling and we now have R-50 insulation above us. Putting in the insulation is kind of fun, instead of spreading it by hand, we used a cannon that expels the pink fiberglass insulation bits. I guess it is more of a hose that pukes insulation than an actuall cannon, but it is still fun. It did result in some uncomfortable moments for me in the attic though. The attic is not actually high enough for me to do anything but belly-crawl and the insulation needed to be at a depth higher than my head in that position. Good times and not for the claustrophobic. If you can't belly-crawl backwards while dodging nails sticking through the roof fast enough, the rising pink tide could swallow you up, never to be found again until some other overly-enthusiastic people try to renovate this house.
A few other significant things have happened, but that is enough for now. So while we're not done, we've taken a giant leap forward. So I won't hoist the big banner for a long while yet but you'll forgive me if I'm feeling a bit ecstatic at the moment (mostly because my fingers have thawed in front of the wood stove enough to type "ecstatic").
A few more photos below for your perusal.