Monday, August 13, 2007

Note to Self

Old unfaced insulation itches like a mo-fo. The carpet is out of the attic, but I'll come back in a few days to remove the excess planking. It looks to be only held in with 1-2 nails per 4' length. Hopefully the Benadryl kicks in soon.

Aww, Hell No.

I started removing carpet from my attic this afternoon, since it is in the mid 70's outside and it should be tolerable if I run a box-fan to get the hot air out of the attic. I knew there was some planking in the attic, but with the carpet in place I couldn't get a good idea as to what was there. I removed one large piece of carpet and found that the PO planked a LOT more of the attic than I had expected. Plus, the planks had no spacing between them for me to check the depth of the existing insulation. I'm working on the assumption that the area between the joists under the planking is fully insulated, but I think I'm going to have to pull up a lot of the planks just to make sure. Plus, I need to install some recessed lighting in the kitchen and wouldn't be able to easily run the wiring if I leave the planks in place. I'm not really looking forward to this, but if the attic is cooled off a lot tonight it shouldn't take more than an hour to get most of the planks removed, along with the carpet. I do plan on leaving a small section of planking to get from one end of the house to the other, but since I'm not going to store anything in there other than insulation, the excess has got to go. There is about 4' of clearance between the plans and the peak of the roof. Being 6'3", I'm expecting this little adventure to suck.




By the way, the PO did have a nice way to get into the attic without going through the living area in the house. There is an access hatch in the wall of the garage. I'm not sure how safe it is as far as fire barriers go, but it's handy for getting crap (carpet and padding, for instance) in and out of the attic. There was a pulley attached to the rafters in the garage, so I just attached a small rope and it worked like a charm. Here, I've got a fan running to force as much hot air out as possible before I spend any quality time with the planks and insulation.




Hey Nate, here's your shed. I even left all the original nails in the wood for you. UPS didn't want to come pick it up for you for some reason. So much for "What can Brown do for you?"...