Woodstove and Insulation

The next thing that took us quite a bit of time trying to figure out was where could we put a wood burning stove.  We visited a friend that has one, and we loved it.

  At first we thought we could build a wall in our "grand banquet hall" and put it caty-cornered against the newly built wall.  See the L shape piece of wood above.  That would be the wall.  And we would have had room behind it to hide some wood.  Plus it hides the door.  Once we laid it out, I didn't like it at all.  

 I didn't like that it was taking up an entire quarter of the room.  I wouldn't have room for a buffet and I would have very little wall space left in that room.  For such a big room it has very little wall space.  We even moved card tables around trying to figure out a furniture layout to see if we could get it to work.  Nope. 

 So then we decided to put it in this corner of the room.  Complete opposite corner.  We wouldn't be using that corner for anything anyway.  So it would be perfect IF we could put some of the chimney inside the attic and have it exit the roof at the peak.  No can do.  The pitch of the roof, hence the pitch of the attic, wasn't in alignment with the ratio  we could angle the chimney.  Code is that the chimney has to go a couple of feet above the roofline.  So we would have about a 12 foot chimney sticking out of the front of our house, with brackets holding it up, if we were to put the woodstove in this corner.  So, we had an expert come out.  After spending an hour with us he determined the best thing we can do is go back to a wood burning furnace and put it in the garage, where the roof pitch is perfect for a chimney.  No stove for us.  I'm over it because if you look in the middle picture above the room next to the big room has a fireplace in it.  And I think that needs to be the focal point of both rooms. 

 So we got busy again.  Insulating.  The downstairs mudroom and bathroom is insulated.

 And so is the attic.  We started with this which was awkward because of the angles.

Note to self.  Do not raise up.  There are nails poking through the roof and they will hurt your head.  I have a hat on because it was cold.

 After all of the attic vents (blue things)  were stapled, we set to insulating.  There is very little room in this area so Dave would cut and I would lay the insulation down.

 I had to walk (crawl) across these boards that he installed so we would be able to get to that section of the attic.

 Then we both got to work on the bigger section of the attic and ta daaaah!

 It's almost finished.  We had about 50 rolls of insulation and ran out! 

 We have been putting insulation down in one direction, then rolling it across in another direction to create an R value of 50.  The R value of the insulation is 25.  This house is on a hill and it's windy out here so we have tried to insulate very well.

We had an extremely windy day yesterday, and there weren't any breezes coming in the house, so that's great!

Cindy