Saturday, Liz and I ventured into the attic with Bob to take another look at the ceiling above our office space. We were talking about potentially lofting the space, and wanted to get a better look at everything “up there” in the attic.
Bob was over tonight, talking with us about plans for the upstairs bedrooms. He went up into the attic to investigate the roofline. It’s been a long while since anyone’s been up there.
To date, the attic has been one of the longest-running project areas in the house. And to think that it’s over, and we don’t have to go up there anymore… well, it’s difficult to fathom. I don’t know that it’s really sunk in yet.
When we first started, we opened up each bag of insulation on the 2nd floor in Liz’s office. It was slow going, as each bag contained 8 lengths of insulation, which we walked up the ladder one by one to the attic opening.
On Friday, both Liz and I had the day off. Since we were looking to add insulation to the attic this weekend, we decided to make Friday our day to get supplies.
After our day of slothful decadence yesterday, Liz and I actually got out of bed and did some work around the house. I headed up to the attic, while Liz settled in to work in the basement.
So I don’t think of my time in the attic in terms of hours, I think of them in terms of podcast episodes. On Saturday, I was upstairs working for about 2.5 Serials. Today, it was one This American Life and two Radio Labs.
It’s funny – I used to be all careful coming up here, putting on a Tyvek suit and booties. Now, I just come up in jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie. Where I used to be super careful moving around, I’m literally just swimming in this stuff. I’m on my hands and knees, I’m on my back, on my belly. I’m hugging the dirty shop vac as I move it around – I don’t really care anymore. It’s like I’m taking a bath in all this muck, and it’s become normal now.
My Saturdays are fast turning into attic days. With winter here and the temperature dropping, we need to get the attic set up with new insulation. But before we can do that, there’s a lot to clean up.
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.
One golden birthday coin for one birthday zombie boy. One can only wonder whether he at his birthday cake or the other children at his party, first.
A view of the back attic – there’s a large area that opens to the left, just past the chimney/brick. The light didn’t really extend very far, so I kind of had to make do (next time, I’ll be using a headlight).
To get rid of it all, I stuffed as much as I could into trash bags. At first, I started cutting it with my knife. After maybe 20 minutes, I gave up on that and just kind of embraced the fact that I’d be swimming in all the squirrel poop. After I left the “cut the insulation into squares” approach, I just started to stuff as much as I could into each bag.
I cannot emphasize how dirty and disgusting the attic was. Liz and Julie braved the upstairs using Tyvek suits and masks, but from what they reported – the floor was littered with mouse pee and poop. There was a ton of junk up in the attic, and the mice/squirrels just had a field day with it all.