Sunday Funday

Winter is in the air.  At least it is supposed to be tomorrow.  You can feel it a little tonight, but according to the weather people (who are correct 87.6% of the time – hahahahaha) we are going to from record highs to 5 to 10 degrees (F) below average.  Last week the overnight lows were in the mid 60’s, the highs this week will be in the high 60’s.

So, it’s time to winterize the house.  Close up the swamp cooler, shut all the windows and, ta-da, insulate the back porch.  That’s been my plan for the last 2 winters, but thanks to Newton’s First Law of Motion (”An object at rest stays at rest … unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”), I just got to it today.  I had all the supplies, it wasn’t that.  I had all the tools, t’weren’t that either.  I do think the unbalanced force that acted on me was the new back door I installed this summer.  Even though it’s solid wood, it’s really an inside door which I decided would work fine since I was planning on insulating the porch outside it. 

So this morning I got out all the supplies and tools and spent a couple hours playing with black tar paper and pink R13 fiberglass insulation.  It actually went pretty smoothly, I think I only swore a half a dozen times.  I don’t think I broke skin at all, but I did get a bit of that expanding foam insulation you spray into the cracks on my hands.  If you’ve worked with that stuff, you know that it sticks to things real goodly.  I still have some on my hands, even after scrubbing them with brillo.

Anyway, it went up quite easily, and looks good.  I’m going to put cedar over it eventually, so the room won’t always look as unfinished as it does in the pictures.

The walls were originally like this, just 2x4 frame with 3/8” thick cedar planks nailed to the side.  Not much of a barrier to the weather, especially after the wood dried and shrank. The first step was to put up the tar paper.  That would protect the insulation from the weather. The 2x4 frame was not as wide as the insulation, so it kind of bulges out right now, but when I put up the cedar planks inside, they will hold the insulation in nicely.Maybe some unbalanced force will get me going to put up the inside cedar next weekend.  Maybe.