We thought that we had it all figured out before hand. I had saved up a lot of vacation days at IBM and would take them when we were building the house. No problem, lots of time for us to do a lot of the work our self and save money. Uh huh, it didn't work out as well as we hoped. The fact that we didn't know what we were doing or what we were in for was not as obvious as one would think.
The house was dried in and they were due to come and hang the sheet rock and we were going to insulate the house and hang the vapor barrier. It was to be a very well insulated house with 6 inch fiberglass insulation in the walls and 15 inch in the ceiling. We had storm windows and well sealed wood windows. The concrete foundation had foam insulation outside covered with stucco. We had commercial quality steel insulated doors and the house did prove easy to heat as we heated until after Christmas with only the circulating fireplace.
We had a two story living room/ dining room with a cathedral type ceiling (20 feet) that was very impressive if you weren't the one hanging on the ladder while Nancy kept it from sliding down. Working with fiberglass insulation is always fun but working with it overhead is especially interesting. I don't think we had an inch on us that was not itching. We finished the insulation at about 12 midnight and went back up to camp to take a shower. Of course our solar heated shower was COLD by then and the water coming from a deep well didn't help. I will say one thing. That cold water must have popped out all those little fiberglass strands because the next day we didn't have any itching.
They say that experience is the best teacher and I suppose that is true. Better yet, to learn from someone else's experience is much better. We did it the hard way. NEVER hire someone to hang sheet rock knowing that they will not be the one to finish it. Guess how I know that.
They did not do a very good job and they didn't try to protect the vapor barrier. We eventually got the sheet rock all finished and by then I almost knew how to do it in a reasonable time. If you sanded some sheet rock anywhere the dust would immediately travel to the farthest corner of the house.
After the sheet rock was finished I put up the solid wood colonial doors, the baseboard, trimmed out the windows and finished the rest of the trim. We finished the woodwork and were ready to paint the house.
Next, a wedding!
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.
Thomas Jefferson
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