Home Renovations on a Holiday Weekend

Home renovations are a dichotomy. They are both exciting and exhausting. Exhilarating and stressful. What started out as a quick renovation of our upstairs (main) bathroom has now been pushed to the back burner as we await our installation of a new HVAC system.

We live in a split level without duct work which means we have to be a little more creative when it comes to our HVAC installation. I wasn’t going to sacrifice the little closet space we have to add duct work and I just wasn’t into opening up walls and ceilings. A mini-split system is going to work perfectly for us. We’re going to have a unit on our main level and then we’ll be able to install a ducted system that is connected to the mini-split compressor that will cool our second floor bedrooms and office above the main floor.

Once we figured out the best system to work with, we then started talking insulation. We have loose, blown-in insulation that was probably original to our house 60+ years ago. At this point, it’s doing very little to actually insulate our house. Spray foam insulation is the best option for us because it seals and insulates our attic, but also allows our new HVAC system to not have to work as hard. So, then we reached out to a contractor to get a quote on insulation in our attic. We’ve already done spray foam insulation in our crawlspace and our attached garage. It actually helped to alleviate our pest problem and has sealed our house amazingly.

Bathroom on Hold

Now, if you remember, we still have the main bathroom that is currently in flux. We’ve got a working shower and toilet, but no vanity and sink! We have a hole in the bathroom wall waiting for a new set-in medicine cabinet. Thankfully, that hole became helpful to the insulation team. They were able to access parts of our house they couldn’t access from the attic. Our spray foam insulation was installed a couple of weeks ago. And we aleady notice a difference in the temperature in the office.

Holiday Weekend Projects

This weekend, we’re removing our old loose insulation. It’s a gross job, but a necessary one before we lay the floor down for the new HVAC system. It’s amazing what you can do with a dustpan and a shop vac. Next week, I’m hoping our HVAC system is fully installed and then maybe we can install the medicine cabinet and our vanity. Then it’s a matter of moving all the stuff back into the attic that was being stored there and is currently spread all over the house!

As I said, home renovations are amazing projects. That will be wonderful, helpful, and pretty when they are complete but are a lot of work to plan and actually do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a job to do!