Working on the Attic and Guest Room

November 30, 2014

Liz and I spent a bit of time this morning, working on the house. While she was out in the yard packing up cement (we still have a large pile)… I was upstairs in the attic, clearing out old insulation.

I’ve made decent progress, but there’s still about a third of the attic I have yet to clear. Previously, all the bags I stuffed were stored along the north wall and inside this alcove. We’ve been steadily throwing out 8-9 bags per week, and this area is finally open once more. So now I’m going in and packing up more bags.

We’ve set at December 15th deadline for ourselves, which is both challenging and daunting. The area underneath the plywood on the right still needs to get cleared out.

But the kicker is – even after we get the insulation out, we need to go back over everything with a smaller shop vac to pick out the small pieces. I’ve been shoveling things into bags using a large dustpan – and that’s been working out ok. But it’s not precise, and leaves a lot of small debris.

So with the days getting colder, we’ll need to move more up here, before we can put down new (and clean) insulation.

While I was upstairs, Liz was hard at work clearing out our guestroom. It was in a great deal of disarray, as there was a lot of wood and plaster left on the ground. She packed up everything, cleaned the whole room out, and made tons of space for more boxes.

We now have a large metal shelving unit in here, which will help for storage. The eventual goal is to move everything unnecessary from the basement up here to the top floor. That way, we’ll have the basement open for cleaning and for insulation work.

It gets pretty cold up here, and since I took out the wall between the bedrooms – I put up a small tarp as a temporary placeholder. Not sure if this helps keep Liz’s sewing area any warmer, but it’s a start.