Priority no. 1: loft insulation

After the last frigid winter in our rental property loft insulation was very high on our list of priorities.  The NZ Government has a grant scheme for insulation - up to $1300 against the cost of installation - but you have to use an approved installation company, so once you factor in the labour cost it's not worth using them - and the companies have long waiting periods - 15 weeks - which would take us beyond the end of winter!  So in the end we decided to do it ourselves - how hard could it be?

We settled on R4.0 which is 190mm thick - most people go for 3.6 but we want a really warm house!  You get 6.3m2 per bale so for our 130m2 house (it's a bungalow) we calculated we needed 21 bales - but deliberately underestimated as we didn't want to buy too much.  So we bought 17 bales at a total cost of just over $1700.

A note on types of insulation: the most commonly used brand is Pink Batts which is made of recycled glass.  It is an irritant which is not nice to install.  The ecological and less irritating option is wool - but at double the cost we decided we didn't have cash to spare.  Anyway, Steve came prepared for action in a disposable boiler suit (the same kind kiwis wear when supporting the All Whites football team!)

Installing insulation is not the most glamorous job and we didn't get much take up of our offer of pizza in return for hard graft - though Jill came along to muck in...

Some tips for insulating your loft: don't open the bales until you've got them into the roof space as they are compressed so they massively expand when you slit them.  A kneeling board is pretty much essential if you don't want bruises all down your legs from shimmying along joists.  Definitely long sleeves, gloves and mask required.  You'll need a knife to cut the insulation to size (it fits between average joist widths but you need to cut it in places) Be prepared to get very hot and very dirty.  Start at the edges and work back towards the loft entrance - and don't do what I did and insulate over the porch - here I am removing the insulation from over the porch area.

It took us about 7 hours in total, this is what the mask - and I - looked like at the end ...

Hard work, I have bruises in very strange places and a head full of cuts from

bashing my head on the beams.

The half finished product:

And the finished product:

In the end we were one bale short, which we thought was pretty good judgement, so the total cost was around $1850. 

At the same time Steve did a sterling job cleaning our very slippery stairs - they don't get any sun in winter so there's moss growing on them.

Next job: fix the ('leaking' is an understatement - more like 'gushing') pipe under the shower...

11 Howard Street's first bit of TLC in 20 years

Our first week in the house and this is what we accomplished.

I replaced the washer in a leaky bathroom tap and discovered the washer wasn't really the problem, it was a big old crack at the bottom. So new taps needed.

After much chiseling and planing, we managed to get the basement door to close and get a lock on it, so now people can't just wander into our basement (they'll just have to kick the door down).

The bathroom is the worst room in the house, so to improve it slightly until we get enough cash together to do it, we put a shelf and mirror up. 

Slightly scarier, we had to cover the holes in the shower lining with the thick plastic that our bed came in. 

We also hired a van (an automatic - rubbish on fuel economy but great for 6 point turns outside our house) and picked up the two tables we purchased last weekend. Firstly, a kitchen table,

And secondly, an extender table that had had a little accident and didn't have any legs, which a furniture shop was selling for 10 pounds! One for the future. 

 

We can't take credit for this last piece of work, removing the kitchen walls of 20 years of unventilated kitchen fumes, a nice lady called Cath came and did it for us. She did a great job.