We've got insulation!

Right now I'm sitting in the dining room, listening to the house creak, and thinking how cold my feet are. This old farmhouse gets awfully drafty when the wind is blowing, and it is surely blowing tonight — gusts up to 35 mph, the weather service says, with a winter storm warning starting in the early hours of the morning. Mom just came downstairs and got a stocking cap to wear to bed — her room is on the north side of the house, and when there's a north wind, it's nearly like sleeping outside.

Dave says it's warmer out in the new house than it is in here, and he might well be right. After he got home today he went out and started a fire in the woodstove — our beautiful, high-efficiency woodstove — and he went out and checked on it this evening before he went to bed and commented on how cozy it is tonight, now that there is insulation on all the walls. "Especially upstairs," he said. (Here's hoping our ceiling fan will do some good pushing that heat back down.)

Dave wanted the house heated at least overnight, so the spray foam insulation has a little more of a chance to cure at the right temperature. The guy installing it said it wouldn't need to be heated more than the time that it took him to clean up, but Dave figured it didn't hurt to get a fire going — and it would be a test for the new insulation as well. Apparently it's doing its job!

... We're still not sure how the one guy got the big heater out by himself, but apparently he did it — and made quick work of the rest of the job, too. He was driving out of the yard before 3 p.m.

... It's too bad it's such lousy weather — there's no way to air the house out, and that spray foam stinks for a while. Here's hoping for some nice weather later this week so we can open the windows!

... Dave did notice that some of the siding is flaring up a bit in the wind. He's going to call the construction company that installed it and ask them to take a look at it again, maybe add some nails. It's not good that it's flapping so much — in this wind, it's going to work itself loose.