Reaching My Goal

About a month ago I set a goal to finish insulating the second floor of the barn, which loosely translated meant at the time putting all the fiberglass in. Now this sounds simple enough, but it's not. It's not only a bear of a job putting in the fiberglass into a cathedral ceiling, but in certain sections I still needed to put rigid board in and seal it with foam. This last part was the big thorn in my side, and I felt like technically I wasn't finished insulating until I got it done. I had actually finished putting the fiberglass in the rest of the ceiling a couple of weeks ago, and could have declared victory at that point, but it would have been a shallow victory for an anal-retentive OCD individual like myself.

I think I mentioned this but the last part involved a section of the roof that extends beyond the dormers, and in the grand scheme of things it's small. However, it involves working inside of a knee wall that has already been framed, so I have to crawl in there and do the work. There are sections where I am literally working blind, which is really hard to do, and the weather has been swelteringly hot. Hmm, what else can I whine about?

Either way, it took awhile to get it done. I had a big sheet of 2 inch blue-board that I glued to the surface, then set about sealing the gaps with foam, which always makes a mess, especially when you're spraying it up into a surface. If it doesn't initially grab, the whole mess comes crashing down in a sticky clump. I ran out of 2 inch board and had to use 1 inch foil backed board. I have a ton of scraps leftover from putting in the ceiling vents, so I just put in a mish-mash of the stuff and once again sealed with foam. That was the hardest part, and once it was done I could just install the fiberglass. I had leftover faced R21, but not a lot, and I ran out of that, as well. I didn't want to buy another bundle because I needed at most 10% of a package, so I used the un-faced stuff that I earmarked for the kitchen, figuring if I ran out downstairs, then I would buy some more. Does this make any sense?

The point is, I finished the darn insulation to the point where I finally feel justified to declare victory. Sure, there a few loose ends that need to be attended to, but I feel for certain that installing all the fiberglass has been accomplished, and right now, that's good enough for me.

I can start thinking about finishing the kitchen and then it's time to install some more rigid board to achieve the magical R35 insulation value that we all long for. Then, if you can believe it, it's time to start thinking about either flooring or drywall. Can you believe it?

Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks to Lauren Randolph for the pic.