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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Snap Out of It, Man!

Not insulating. Nuff said.

This is part two of my follow-up to Back Hall: We Need to Make a Ceiling Decision, where we were having a hard time figuring out the best way to partially insulate the ceiling/roof.

Now, I am a decision maker. I don't normally waffle too long. I may come up with eight different ideas, but I'm pretty efficient at deciding which one to go with. Part of being an efficient decision maker is knowing when I'm having trouble deciding. Usually when that happens, I just don't decide and live with what I've got a little longer. This works really, really well for things like furniture, clothing, cookware, plants...just about everything.

But for some reason I didn't employ this strategy with the back hall ceiling. I.don't.know.why. Luckily, due to some reader suggestions, not to mention "fresh eyes" on the problem, I was taken by the shoulders and shaken like a dog shakes a dead toy.

Snap out of it, man!

Does the space really need insulation? Probably not, it's not heated anyway.

So, why bother? Well, because it gets cold out there in the winter and becomes a sauna in the summer.

Didn't you install new windows that open? Won't that help with the sauna? Yes, that is a good point.

Isn't the space really just a passageway to the basement and the back yard? You don't, like sit around back there do you? Yes, that's true. No, we don't.

Could you maybe live with the space uninsulated for a while and revisit the idea later if it seems appropriate? Yes, we'll go with that!

So, there you have it. We've decided to hold off on insulating. One problem solved and just 73 more to go. It's all in the details, folks, and we've got some weird ones to figure out. We'll just have to get creative.




Monday, March 4, 2013

Back Hall: We Need to Make a Ceiling Decision

Work on this space has pretty much halted. Last month we finally put up some insulation - the el cheapo stuff. We tried to make a reasonable argument to use denim, but cost-wise we couldn't justify the extra bucks. Plus we hate the Earth, anyway.

Nate also whipped together a temporary railing. But I rather like the aesthetic. So we may go with something that looks similar when we build the permanent structure.


Clearly, we have a little more insulation to finish. Before we put up gypsum, we are looking at different ways to treat the ceiling. This is the existing roof/ceiling structure and looks exactly as it did before we started this repair. There was no insulation originally and the joists aren't deep enough to insulate it the "right way." So we are trying to decide if insufficient insulation is better than none.

And to bore you a little further, the kitchen door swings into this space and causes more trouble. The door will hit the ceiling if we were to install a ceiling along the bottom of the joists (like a normal ceiling). So that won't work. We can't reverse the swing into the kitchen without loosing at least two inches on a 28" opening. Not happening. Pocket door? We are actually considering it, only because we hate ourselves more than we hate the Earth.