If You Give a Mouse a Cookie You May Find an Architect Who is Just Trying to Paint His Living Room
If you are a parent, grandparent or teacher of young children then you are probably familiar with the series of books by Laura Numeroff. What starts as an innocent act – giving a mouse a cookie, turns into an extensive, swisting series of events. It turns out that giving a mouse a cookie is not a simple matter.
It also turns out that some home improvement projects can have the same effect on architects. In January, I started the seemingly simple project of painting the living room.
The first step was to do a little prep and repair work on the existing plaster: scrape down the high spots, patch 
a few cracks and replace a few small areas that had been poorly repaired in the past.
“Sweetie, while you are at it, what would it take to remove those ugly, old, non-functioning baseboard radiators?” I figured a few hours to rip them out, a few hours to patch the plaster and a few hours to install new baseboard. All in all, not too much extra work for a much better result.
Let’s just say that the baseboard radiators pulled off more of the plaster than expected.
In the midst of working I realized that the inside face of the windows was warmer than the inside face of the walls and that the Living room was rather uncomfortable.
“What if I insulated  the exterior walls?”
For about $400 I could add two layers of 3/4″ R-5 rigid insulation and a layer of 1/2″ gypsum board, and the energy savings woudl pay for this in about three years.
I finished installing the vapor barrier today and started hanging the gypsum board. The steps that led up to this:
- Remove baseboard radiators,
- Remove window casing, sills and stools,
- Remove wooden fireplace mantle,
- Insulate double hung window counterweight pockets,
- Repair double hung window counterweights,
- Cut back carpeting,
- Install insulation and furring strips, and
- Install blocking for hanging pictures and window treatments,
More detailed descriptions of these steps shall follow in future posts.
Dan Bossenbroek.
March 29, 2010
Tags: Home Improvement, Insulation Posted in: Energy Conservation, Home Improvement, Insulation
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