One wall down--three to go!

This weekend was poly and drywall time.  But really, how can one top the mega fun of last weekend!?

So on Saturday, we went for coffee and breakfast at our favourite place, then ran some errands, then Rob did some electrical wiring of lights and I did three hours of snow and ice chipping, as it was plus six here.  Then we moved into the garage and moved wood, lawn mowers, and tires out of the way.  We unrolled the poly (vapour barrier), measured, and cut.  Then Rob stapled the top and middle.  While Rob stapled, I took a quick power nap of five minutes on a bundle of insulation--tired from my 12k run, three hours of chipping, and an hour of sizing and cutting. Then time to run to the opening of Wintershines, our annual winter festival, organized by our friends Kim and Shad.  This year, they acquired an inflatable igloo--with room inside for 100 people and a stage.  Way cool!

Sunday rolls around and we have coffee and read the newspaper.  Headed out around 10:00. Rob taped  and tarred the joints and I cut a piece of poly to go along the bottom gap. We started hanging sheets of drywall--one after another.  Went pretty well.  Nine sheets of drywall in eight hours. Twelve foot sheets cut to fit.  Plus cut outs around the four plug ins.  Not bad! Feels warmer and quieter already! And the wall looks so much bigger now as one giant white mass.

The next three walls will be a tad trickier, as the west wall has a door, switch panels, and a window.  The south wall has the electrical panel. The east wall has the garage door in  the middle.

Rob estimates 7-10 more weekends to finish everything.  What???????

 

 

 

Fibre-rama--Fun, Fibre, and Frenzy

This was a huge fibre weekend.  We kicked it off my attending a fibre art show opening, with fibre works from artists depicting the prairies.  My lovely sister-in-law Elizabeth had two pieces in the exhibit.  Amazing works with wool, fabric, thread.  Then from Fibre Friday night, we passed into Fibre Insulation Saturday. 


We picked up the attic insulation blower on Saturday morning (we had tried to blow the insulation over the xmas holidays, and picked up the blower, brought it home, and spent an hour trying to get it to work. It was broken.  So we took it back, and postponed the work for another day.  Which wasn't such a bad thing, as it was 30 below outside, and probably about the same in the attic where Rob would be working). But this Saturday, it was only minus 3--perfect.


We got the machine put together, Rob went up in to the attic with the hose, and off we went.  It took me awhile to get the hang of the blower.  I cut the fibreglass insulation bags open (when you cut the bags, the contents are under so much pressure, that they explode open like the Pilsbury dough crescent rolls tube.  They even formed a neat looking arch like an igloo--see pix below).  I dumped in the contents--expecting the hopper to suck the fibre in.  It doesn't do that.  So then I tried placing clumps in, but you really have to push the fibre down--but avoid the blades!  The blades grind the clumps of fibre into fluffy snow pieces.  The first bag took half an hour.  I was rushing to feed the hopper, grab handfuls of fibre, keep it off the floor, make sure there was a continuous flow of fibre threw the hose to Rob--I was run off my feet.  Yikes.  Have to pick up the pace as we have 20 bags to go through and at this rate, it will take all weekend!  The second bag took 20 minutes.  And finally I got into a rhythm and had a sterling pace of 13 minutes per bag.  Rob would bang on the rafters if he needed me to stop the blower. I in turn would turn off the blower to indicate when I had finished a bag, as Rob had to gauge the placement of each bag quantity between all the rafters, to ensure even coverage all around. I thought the flow of fibre would come out like a stream of water from a fire hose, but Rob said it wasn't that fast or exciting.  Darn. We got going and got 15 bags done in 5 1/2 hours and then stopped to take Rob out for birthday dinner.  We had to rush to get cleaned up--covered in fibre clumps and fibre snow.


Fibre Sunday rolls around, and we finish up blowing the last five bags, then tweaking the lofts of fibre, then clean up. The machine dropped clumps of fibre around it and Rob would have fibre flakes fall from the ceiling--like it was snowing.  Three hours later we were dropping the machine back off at Rona.


So that was a big chore out of the way.  Next week, we get to poly and drywall the walls--then the garage will be super air tight and warm.  The fun of Monster Garage just never ends!