Rehabber’s Rehab

Unfortunately the snow in Chicago is usually gray rather than white, just like the blown insulation in our backroom.  Taking down the ceiling in the backroom was something I was dreading because I could see the sixteen inches deep insulation that was in the ceiling from my kitchen view of the horribly sagging back roof.  But it needed to be done and I had the day off in the middle of the week with no car to go anywhere.

So, I put up the plastic barrier, opened all the windows, and donned my mask.  One by one I took down the rows of 1inch furring boards running perpendicular to ceiling rafters.  The Snow began lightly as their is less ceiling where the roof slopes off at the exterior of the back room, but as I worked towards the kitchen, the insulation fell harder until a complete Gray-Out blinded my vision and I stumbled through the three foot deep drifts.

After a lengthy fresh air break, I started picking up the insulation.  After an hour, I felt I had gotten nowhere, but eventually I found the floor again.  In all I filled up forty trash bags of insulation!  Alas there are no pictures of this adventure as Liz had taken the camera to work.

We checked today into waste removal for all the demo’d drywall, 2×4′s and who knows what else we’re going to have. This is the dirty side of a project, but this is the part that can quickly turn it from manageable to overwhelming. It is also all of the dirt and dust that gets to me the most quickly, when I can’t keep anything clean and am running run into stray boards all the time. It is what makes me hate these projects sometimes because things are ALWAYS messy, and you can’t even have a bowl of cereal with out rinsing out the dishes first.

Waste management is important to us from an environmental standpoint as well, as this has the largest initial impact. So we want to deal with our refuse not only quickly and safely, but also as enviornmentally as possible. (more…)