Insulation Installation

We have the best friends. Today Fabian and Brian joined us in putting in the insulation in a portion of our house. This is something our contractor has allowed us to do ourselves to save some time and money. He's still going to take care of most of the rear of the house, but there was plenty for us to do.

We recently expanded the scope of the renovation somewhat to include opening up the walls in the Studio, Guest Bedroom, Office, and hallway, putting in new insulation and drywall to replace the old plaster. This was going to be a necessity at some point, and even though our budget for this phase is strained, it just makes too much sense to do this now versus later. Demo-ing all of our bedrooms (after we've finished them and made them livable, no less!) while we're living in the house would be almost unthinkably disruptive, and a waste.

Our wall construction was mostly plaster over wood slats, and our contractor had told us that we could pretty easily stuff the insulation up and down behind the slats, removing a few to make it easier. This turned out to be difficult, so we decided to just tear out most of the slats so the insulation could be just placed in. It was a bit more demolition than we expected, but nothing we couldn't handle.

The insulation itself went into an empty cavity quite readily; the only tricky thing was working in odd-shaped areas where there were slanted studs, or in tight corners or spaces above windows and doors. Thankfully, we could actually tear the insulation by hand without much fuss, so the work went pretty fast.

Overall, this project took under 4 hours to do half of the top floor, and saved us over $1000. The results look great, and just being in the newly insulated rooms you can tell a difference in sound absorption and how "solid" the place feels.