Thursday, November 15, 2007

A beautiful sight



No, someone didn't egg our house. This is the sweet sight of an insulation installation. The last week has been chaotic, with workers swarming around the house, drilling holes, mixing the foam, and filling our walls with goo. (Actually, it's not goo, it's Air-Krete, a moldproof, rodentproof, fireproof insulation for walls) It's left our landscaping trampled (okay, there wasn't much landscaping to deal with, fortunately), and it left my patience wearing a little thin at times (such as when I had teleconferences for work and had to keep hitting the "mute" button so that my coworkers in two different states didn't have to share the noisy joy with me.) But it's done, and now we can look forward to a toasty winter.

It's hard to believe that people having been living in this house since the 1870s with no insulation in the walls. Do you know how cold it gets in the winters in the Finger Lakes? Well, I don't know yet from firsthand experience, but I've heard it gets COLD. (As a side note, there was an infamous Civil War prisoner-of-war camp in Elmira, just south of Seneca Lake. There's a reason the Confederates named it Hellmira, and it wasn't because it was hot!)

Anyway, the house looked like it's been in a street fight, what with all the patched holes for the insulation to go in. But it's worth it! A toasty house AND a lower fuel bill this winter. Can't beat that with a stick!

Of course, I still plan to keep warm by knitting. I'm about 2/3 of the way through my scarf project (begun in August! :( but I am stubbornly refusing to put a new project on the needles until this one is done. (Of course, that doesn't stop me from buying yarn for new projects--I just can't start them yet!)

3 comments:

Morticcia said...

My dad and his side of the family have been nestled in the Adirondacks, up near Ticonderoga, for a long time and whenever he comes down to Boston to visit in the winter he has made comments about how much colder it is.

He says the mountain cold is not as cold as the coastline cold. Maybe you'll see the same? Or maybe it's just my dad.

Jenn said...

Insulation is a very good thing. We have an old house too which is finally getting insulated. It's amazing the difference it makes.

Knitting Linguist said...

Congratulations on getting through the insulating process! Of course, a warm house is never an excuse to not knit :)