Days 38-48: Moving right along! Thick insulation done! More windows/doors in!

Day 38 we resumed getting the first (thicker) layer of roof insulation in, which was starting to wear on us--it's a lot slower than the downstairs ceiling was, due to extra non-full-depth studs being in the way just about everywhere.

Day 38: Getting more chunks in toward the apex.

Day 38: We found chunks of thick wire like this one embedded in the insulation when we went to cut through sometimes.  Thankfully only two or three, but we still raised our eyebrows.  

Day 39 was very exciting.  It was a nice day out, the construction crew showed up early, and they had picked up the last of the roof tiles on their way (so apparently those were ready finally, who knew?).  They set to work and soon had them all in.  So meanwhile we did little things downstairs and then started on the last third of the roof insulation, which now we were allowed to do since that section was rapidly getting covered in tiles as we worked.

Day 39: Got the last custom row of these brackets in (going around the staircase opening.)

Day 39: Sadly, whole pads of insulation continued to fall out of the roof--even ones we hadn't deemed needing taping.  (Also it turns out we should use string when needed.  That tape is highly specialized and expensive.  It also doesn't work well for this application.)

Day 39: Since our previous strategy of notching the pads of insulation to make space for protruding half-studs didn't seem to be working out (it's hard to put them in properly and then they don't stay), we decided that for parts like this, we would cut everything piece-wise.  Here though this is the same as on the other side so far--we've stuffed insulation through so some hangs out outside.

Day 39: Now with the tiles up, it's dark on this side!  But we'd bought a 2100-lumen LED work light anticipating this, so that's what we worked by.

Day 39: We made some progress here.  Still lots to go, though.

Day 40 was nice out again so we thought we'd take the tarps off the insulation that had been delivered in the rain, and see what the damage was.

Day 40: The thin second layer of insulation for the walls and roof.  As you can see, on some packs, water got in everywhere.  Here's our attempt to let it dry out, but it's a slow process in the cold, even if it's sunny.

Day 40: However, there was enough warmth for some bugs to wake up again.  We hope they don't get too comfortable there...

Day 40: Still not dry at the end of the day, so we had to pull it back into the house to avoid it getting dew (or even rain) on it overnight.

Day 41: We got all the remaining insulation loaded into the house and organized.  More importantly, two more doors are installed!  (The one on the right is the one we previously had just cut a hole in the black paper for.)

Day 42: Roof insulation is getting done, in large part.  There will be a lot of final little details to do though thanks to our new cutting strategy, but at least these are holding up a bit better.

Day 42: The new door from yesterday, from the outside.

Day 42: The other new door.  Watch that first step!

Day 42: Today we were very proud to install the two simpler (squarish) windows upstairs ourselves, without our general contractor present.  

Day 43 was a milestone for us.  Many things depend on each other, so we had a side-quest and built ourselves a staircase, which we thought turned out rather well given that neither of us had built one before.  The reason we did this was to make it a lot easier on us and safer to load all that new insulation upstairs, which then meant we could reorganize the downstairs and tidy it up to get ready to put in the biggest two window-doors.

Day 43: Staircase!

Day 44 saw yet more falling insulation.

Day 44: Two fell out in the corner, and a third one tore itself in half falling out, in the next column over.

Day 44: Here's how you string them into place.  Seems to hold well despite the cruddy, overly fluffy texture of these pads.

Day 45: Just about done!  We decided that rather then let the remaining fluffy insulation go to waste, we'd put it in over top of the big apex beam, so the beam could hold it in place.  It worked rather well!  In the end we had some full packs of insulation left over.  (You can see a few details that will still need filling in though overall.)

Day 46: Drum roll please...it's all in!  Every little gap!  We can (literally) breathe a bit easier now.  (We were wearing masks, but still, the fibers get everywhere.)

Day 47 we didn't take any pictures, because it was a lot of little detail stuff.  We'd expected our contractor would come to help with the bigger and more complicated windows, but he couldn't in the end; meanwhile we had prepped the windows by getting all the packing pieces unscrewed and away, and cleaning up the space around the windows.  We also did some more silicon application around the installed windows, and where we had already done that and let it dry, we put the final layer of special tape between the black paper and the silicon.

Day 48: With the upstairs insulation done, we started putting these long brackets in (which, unlike the downstairs ceiling, will hold a layer of those thin pads of insulation in addition to wiring and drywall.)  Got almost half of it done.  Most of the time was spent setting up the corners and end rows, which had to be done once for each of the four sections of the overall space.  The rest should go pretty fast, within a day.

So that's it for now...next time you read this, we hope our windows are all finally in, the vapor barrier and brackets are done, and we're putting up drywall.  :-)