Winter is coming

With many of the larger projects wrapping up and the kitchen re-do not slated to start until the spring, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to tackle what is to become my office space.  The space constitutes what I assume to be an old sleeping porch that has been enclosed.  It's located off our master bedroom and sits up over the front porch.  A great rustic feeling space that was left out of the half-ass renovation done on the upstairs it should make a fine place for my fly tying bench, computer and a book case. However, it lacks any insulation and in the summer was a broiler so its likely to be an icebox in the winter without a little work.  Plus, it sits adjacent to the ceiling space over the living room and foyer that lost any insulation when we had to tear out the ceiling to abate the vermiculite.

The first thing I had to do was to finish cleaning out some of the old insulation and debris in the knee wall space that we wanted to insulate.  There was a mix of old, moldy compressed fiberglass insulation, cedar shakes, woody debris from who knows where, old bees nests, newspapers and magazines from the 1930-40's.  The only thing I didn't find was Jimmy Hoffa's body but then again I'm not yet done in that space.  Plus I pulled out the rug in the office space that was covering some great old plank boards.

The picture below shows the knee wall space over the front porch and the backside of the office wall without any insulation.  The white foam pieces you see in the upper part of the frame I placed there to block airflow into the space above the office ceiling.  Stopping airflow goes a long way towards creating a warm thermal barrier.  Later I will spray foam around them to seal any gaps.

On the right, is the wall that abuts our bedroom.  It contained fiberglass insulation that fortunately was still in good shape but it was simply tucked in between the studs and had nothing to ensure it wouldn't fold down in places, which it had done.

First I stapled the fiberglass in place at the top and then came in with insulation board to cover the wall and create a better thermal barrier that could be sealed.  I used old pieces of lathe to anchor it with nails. 

Below is portion of the finished knee walls before the blown cellulose.  The upper picture is one side of the house and the next shows the other side.  I put the shiny side out to reflect heat away as that seems to be a bigger issue here given how hot our summers are here in Spokane.  Then I used Great Stuff spray insulation to seal any and all cracks or openings.

With the walls all squared away it was off to home depot to pick up the insulation machine and 30 bales of cellulose insulation.  Luckily the raft trailer comes in handy for such projects.  In the end we were 10 bales short so Elizabeth had to make a run back to the store late in the day. 

It took us about 5-6 hours to blow in the insulation which didn't include the set-up and breakdown time.  At one point we developed a nasty plug in the tubing that took use at least 30 minutes to clear. 

Talk about messy...

In the end we blew in about 18 inches of cellulose over the 1st floor ceilings.  I used some old particle board to keep the insulation in place and inside each access point there is a plank that allows access without compressing the cellulose.  I still need to make new doors with tight seals that access the knee wall spaces and obviously there is still more space needing the walls covered with insulation board and cellulose blown in.