They covered the furnace with sheeting, so I turned the heat off and kept an eye on the thermostat to see how the house reacted. Before having the attic insulated, on a day like today (20 degrees out and windy), it would take about 50 minutes for the temperature to go from 66 to 62. In our post-attic-insulated world, it took almost four and a half hours for the first floor temp to drop from 66 to 62, and the second floor thermostat still read 64. When they were done, I turned the heat back on and the house was back to 66 in about 90 minutes.

So clearly you can see why I’m so excited about this whole insulation thing.

There’s not a whole lot to see with foam injection–just the same wall that was there before, but with holes in it. However, looking up into the balloon framing, you can see the insulation (and lack thereof). Here are some before and after photos:

Before:

After:

I managed to get some really cool video of both the closed-cell foam and the open-cell foam being applied, and I’ll try to post those in the next few days.

So, after having gotten six separate quotes for fiberglass, cellulose, and foam, I chose Innovative Insulation Solutions to do the job, and I couldn’t be happier with the work they did. Martin and Mike are the guys who did the basement (Martin was one of the four who did the attic), and they all did a fantastic job–they took their work seriously, but were exceptionally friendly and very patiently answered my (many many) questions. There’s nothing better than contractors who are willing to talk to you about what they’re doing to your house. Here are Mike and Martin standing out front after another day in the foam mines:

If you need insulation and you live near area code 847, give Innovative a call.

Here are the windows (except for one casement window which is behind me) all ready to go back in. Note that they’re actually flat now. Who would have thought?

They started by removing the boards, setting the panes back into the frames, and securing them in place with nails.

Once the windows were set back into place, they daubed glazing compound around the perimeter of each window:

And then they smoothed the glazing compound out. Just that easy. I’ll try and get some real “after” pictures when we get a nice sunny day.

Thanks again to Andy and Joseph from Circle Studios. They did a fantastic job and took really good care of our windows–we couldn’t be happier with their work.

When removing old (fixed) stained glass windows, you’ve got basically two paths to take: Remove the glass with the frame intact (disassembling some amount of trim in the process), or remove just the windows by chipping out the old glazing and pushing the window out from the inside. Andy decided to take the latter approach with the foyer window and the two living room windows. While it took some effort to chip out all the old glazing, they got the windows out in one piece. The whole removal process took under two hours, but it took them another hour or two to carefully board up the windows and place the storms back in. M. put some old towels under where they were working, so there was hardly anything to cleanup.

Andy’s assistant removed the old glazing from the outside:

After removing the glazing, they were surprised to discover that the nails holding the window in place were square!
Here’s Andy helping to get the window out from the inside by using a putty knife:

And lastly, the sad-looking boarded-up window:

And here’s Andy’s helper removing the glazing from one of the living room windows. You can really see how badly the window is bowing out by looking at the reflections on the different panes of glass.

So off they went with our windows and now we’re looking forward to living in a cave for a week. If all goes well, they’re coming back next Friday to put the windows back in.

We tried a few paint colors in the kitchen/breakfast room and the the powder room. We chose a nice darker blue for the powder room and have decided on a pretty dark red (Some kind of Maple) for the kitchen. Since this side of the house faces West, a dark color should look quite nice.

They put two coats of semi-gloss finish on today, and screened once in-between coats.

And they weren’t kidding about the smell–we could smell it out on the front sidewalk, and it reeked to high heaven. It smells like a cross between rubbing alcohol, sterno, paint thinner and Vics Vapo-Rub. They were just putting the last strokes on the second coat at about 5:30, so we came back at 10:00PM to check it out and close some of the windows.

In short, it’s beautiful–everything that we had hoped for. And without further ado, here’s the finished product:

To see some before and after comparisons, see the comparison pics.

Monday’s going to be the day for the finish. Woo.

• Golden Oak
• Ipswich Pine
• Cherry
• Golden Pecan

I handed this list to John this morning, and showed him a picture of a beautiful floor that M. and I liked from American Bungalow magazine. He recommended that in addition to the above four, we also try out “Colonial Maple” as that seemed to him to be closest to the floor in question.

While I was at work, they “laid out” samples of the stain directly onto our floor in the living room for us to get a feel for how the different stains look. Here’s what it looked like:

From left to right, these are:

• Ipswich Pine
• Golden Oak
• Cherry
• Golden Pecan
• Colonial Maple (Benjamin Moore, not Minwax)

Before seeing the stains on the floor, my favorite was Golden Pecan, with Ipswich Pine as a close contender. M. liked the Golden Oak, with the Ipswich Pine coming in second. But seeing them on the floor, we ruled out Cherry as looking too much like dyed red, and both Ipswich Pine and Golden Pecan as being too light. That left us with the Golden Oak and Colonial Maple. After walking around the stains for a bit, holding lights high and low, and stooping down and standing up, we finally decided that the Colonial Maple brought out the natural coloring of the red oak beautifully (without looking phony or dyed). Here’s a close-up of the winner:

The floors are now almost completely sanded, and they’re about ready to start screening them.

The downstairs wood floors were covered in carpet for an unknown duration of time, along with a runner up the center of the stairs–this travesty in all likelihood saved the floors a helluvalot of wear and tear, so it’s not All Bad. The wood floors throughout the house are red oak (except the kitchen, which is maple), and considering that the house is 92 years old, they’re remarkably level and even, although they do squeak a bit.

It appears that the previous owner pulled up the carpet and had all the wood floors refinished about four years ago, but I’m hoping that he didn’t pay very much as the refinishers did a horrible job.

First: They didn’t bother to sand all the way around the radiators, they didn’t sand all the old finish off in some places, they attempted to rectify some squeaks by pounding 8d nails into a bunch of boards, and they did a real half-assed job on the stairs (esp. the risers). Lastly, they didn’t bother to pull up the quarter-round (aka “the shoe”) between the baseboard and the floor, despite the fact that a) it was pulling away from the floors in some places, b) the floor under the shoe was dark dark dark, and c) it looked like crap with a dark line running under the shoe around the room.

They repaired a hole in the middle of the foyer by gluing in a small divot of wood (which popped out shortly thereafter, I can only imagine). The bullnose ledge leading to the basement looked like a dog had chewed half of it off. Lastly, it looked like the floor had been stained in some areas and not at all in others–the master bedroom floors looked positively white while the rest of the floors were just light.

Add to that the fact that the house was rented out for the last few years, and you wind up with some pretty darned trashed floors. The northwest bedroom was gouged so badly that it looks like someone had been dragging boat anchors around in there.

So in preparation for the Floor Guys coming tomorrow, I pulled all of the quarter-round up in all of the rooms where we’re going to be having the floors refinished (which comes down to every room except the kitchen and the sun room). They offered to do this, but I figured that it was a good way to get to know the house and how it all goes together. In the process of doing this, I discovered that the northwest bedroom appears to have had a fair amount of its oak trim replaced at some point–with pine trim. And for an encore, pulling the quarter round off in some areas really highlighted just how badly the previous refinishers had gouged the floor in some places.

Think I’m exaggerating? See for yourself.

Here’s the master bedroom floor:

And the lovely finishing job they did around the radiator in the master bedroom:

Some beautiful gouges from the northwest bedroom:

One of the better looking steps:

And lastly, the wonderful hole in the middle of the foyer: