Saturday, March 05, 2005

Insulating the baby's room

I wanted to take care of the messy job of insulating the baby's room before the little tike arrives. We've had a few mice appear in places in the house, so It's time to take care of things like that before the spawn comes.

Behind our knee walls we have storage on one side and closets and drawers on the other. Apparently, when the house was built, it had cedar shake roof. I can tell by all of the cedar shake remnants that are junking up the attic. The house was very nicely insulated for a 1939 house. But they put the insulation on the underside of the roof sheathing when they built the house. This is fine for a cedar shake roof that will breathe and allow moisture to escape. Not so for a modern asphalt roof with plywood sheeting. Moisture to build up, rot and mold will occur if there's not sufficient ventilation.

All of that insulation on the underside of the sheeting, in the knee walls had to come off. What a terrible, messy, icky job that is. It wouldn't have been that bad if it was just insulation but (remember that old cedar shake roof junk? ) It and the old nails, and tree leaves would come raining down on me as I would remove each piece. Most of the cedar shakes apparently slit down to the bottom of the roof cavity in the knee wall. After removing each 8 foot piece I would roll it up and then put it into a trash bag. One bag per roll. I removed about 40 bags. good thing too, on the north side , the mold was incredible. I sprayed it with some bleach and it will dissipate in a few years anyways as I've removed the moisture source and the moldy sections will be sealed off from the living space again.

After the insulation was gone. I rented one of those cellulose blowers from lowes and about 30 bags of insulation. I proceeded to insulate the floor of the knee wall and filled the floor joist cavities with cellulose. In the closets I installed a "pergo" floor. I added insulation to the walls that were previously un insulated and then put sold cedar up to finish it off. It's the nicest closet in the Village. I repeated this with the other knee walls we have (well still working on that)

We also have these wonderful, deep, 3 drawer built-ins, one in each room. They too are un finished to the back of the knee wall. Quite drafty too. I pulled out the drawers and removed one of the slats between the drawers so I could squeeze into the knee wall, as those sections they were my only openings. I removed the insulation covering the underside of the roof deck. I added the cellulose insulation to the cavities of the floor joists. Since this wasn't a closet I installed R30 batts of fiberglass insulation onto the knee wall's walls. I then enclosed the drawers with plywood (covered in r30) and some spray foam to seal out the drafts.