Bonus Room

Above the garage there is a large bonus room that lets in a great deal of light. It is the brightest room in the house. Unfortunately it was ugly and cold. We decided that this was a project that we could tackle ourselves and I loving the demo started to rip it apart. I know you are all surprised that I decided to do this! So off to work Mike goes and I work on removing the siding that was used on the outside of the house that is also on the inside of this room. As the photos shows there is siding with a second thinner strip covering the seams. It was a pretty shade of blue.

The material is a pressed cardboard that made a mess as it came down. Some places it was glued in addition to the trillion nails they decided they needed to hang this stuff.

Fortunately the window is over the closed in backyard and we can throw out the smaller pieces. We plan to use these for the out door fireplace that we will put in this spring/summer.

Once the siding was removed we saw why it was so cold in there. The R7 insulation is under-rated for the area. This was installed in 1972. R-value is a measure of thermal resistance used in the building and construction. The bigger the number, the better the building insulation's effectiveness. The bigger the number the thicker the insulation. So as you know, out it comes. We wore the needed protective gear and sweated up a storm.

We read up on what R-value we should put back into the walls and we headed to Home Depot and looked at our choices. We wanted R18 but they did not have any so we saw R19 and decided that the bigger the number the better. So we bought enough to complete the 17x20 room. We put the insulation in and noticed it was a little puffier than we had hoped. It will compress we say and headed back to the store to get the sheet rock. We rented a Home Depot truck, loaded it with 25 sheets and headed home.

We spent the next morning and afternoon cutting the first piece to fit around the outlet on the wall. We put it up and realized that the puffiness of the R19 was too much to force the sheet rock on it. So Mike called his life line and asked what we should do. We learned from Dad Gorneau that R19 was made for 2x6 walls and not 2x4 walls which we had hence the puffiness. So out in comes, back to the store we go, buy R13 and reinstall it. The R19 will go in the attic space.

So back to hanging the sheet rock and we discover that we are not very good at it. 2 days and 2 pieces were hung. We decided to get help and hired the job out.

After 6 hours with the professional hanger the room was hung and mudded.

Needs to be mudded 3 times before we can paint. So here I am waiting for him to finish as it needs to dry overnight each time. I should be able to paint tomorrow, Thursday, March 26th.

Now to decide what color to paint it!