8: Insulation

Pretty straightforward.  Every single cavity on an exterior wall or ceiling got stuffed with as much fiberglass insulation as possible.

(Click on any image for a larger view.)

Virginia at work.

One option I considered was spray-in insulation.  There was some fairly expensive equipment that I would have had to buy, but that wasn't the main reason I decided against it.  The slow, incremental process that I was using to build the house didn't lend itself to putting up all the insulation at once.  I found myself wanting to insulate a section then having to do something else, only to return later to the insulation.  Maybe more importantly, by this point in the project Virginia was feeling left behind.  I was the one with the everything in my head and she needed something meaningful to do.  All I could suggest to her was to put in insulation.  Add in our increasing debt load and the stress was piling up.

We put R59 in the ceiling; here in one of the skylight shafts above the staircase.   R19 to R26 went in the walls.

Virginia drew the image of a roaring fire to hang in front of our future fireplace.  It made for a nice 1990 Christmas card.