this morning we rented a van and went to the home depot pro store.
this pro store is aimed at contractors and there seemed to be only a dozen people shopping and maybe twice as many employees. to our surprise, they were extremely friendly, helpful AND knowledgeable. (??!!) i rented the van so i was the one driving it. you can’t tell from the photos but it’s BIG and the only way to view behind it is through the mirrors. plus it was raining. scary.
we bought 4 sheets of drywall, 12 sheets of hardie backerboard (mold resistant concrete board for the bathroom) and 32 packages of green fiber recycled cellulose blow-in insulation. we also rented the blower to install it.
we feel good about using this insulation, it’s 85% recycled material (paper and other stuff) and uses 10 times less energy to produce it. it’s also not itchy like fiberglass so you don’t have to worry about it getting it on your skin. but it sure is messy! i was putting the material into the machine; turtle was upstairs installing it. each time he came down to check on me, he was wearing a thicker coat. (that was partially the machine’s fault; it kept getting blocked, so i was only putting a small amount of insulation in it at a time. if you don’t keep a steady stream of material flowing it will just blow and then dust fills the air. tip: there are different types of machines. apparently the one we got does not have the power to blow the insulation through 100 feet of hose up two levels. it started working okay once we took it up to the top floor and reduced the hose to 50 feet.)
but he said applying it was really peaceful, like shooting grey snow. unfortunately i was too busy to take photos of him in action.
note to bubba: sorry, there will be lots of posts to catch up on from this weekend! mathew has monday and tuesday off, hopefully we’ll get a lot done.