Saying goodbye to our reflective walls.. and how about some goat ice cream?
Most of you may not know that I worked as a paid staff member on ISSAC, an imaging system currently installed in the International Space Station. Some of my work and code (and the work of many others) is actually orbiting our planet, in space! More likely though, if you have been following our blog for a while, you do know that the interior of our house has looked like the interior of some sort of space going vessel.
I can assure you, I have no plans to allow my house to continue resembling something out of some bad 1980's sci-fi movie.
As part of my plan to make our heating and cooling systems efficient, we gutted our house down to the studs, spray foamed, installed some additional fiberglass insulation (also helps with sound dampening), and then topped it off with a reflective foil. My wife has been patient long enough, so this last weekend I made the trip to pickup drywall and more materials for shiplap. I almost forgot what non-reflective walls looked like!
The foil is slowly disappearing! So long my shiny friend, you can continue to do what you do best, out of eyesight!
Drywall is up in both our dining and living rooms.
We wrapped up shiplap installation and painting in our mudroom/laundry room!
It has been taking a while for my eyes to adjust!
This is what this room looked like when we moved in:
Don't let their "fresh" mint green paint fool you, the room was a mess, no windows and the laundry plumbing leaked. No problem! Did you know you can fix plumbing leaks by installing laminate flooring over the existing wet wood floor? Yum, imaging how nicely it smelled in there. Fresh mold and mildew!
We have been trying to work with every little area to pull out as much storage space as possible while still keeping the room's 1920's farm house look that we are going for. Practical, with minimal waste, both in regards to space and decor.
Everything can be used as a decoration. Egg basket..
Laundry soaps....
Even the bibs and egg cartons...
We finally have some semblance of order in this room, after only two years!
I do still need to finish the inside, doors, and face of the coat/boot/shoe/glove/hat closet.. there is also the flooring and trim, but it'll get there!
There has been plenty going on, in and around our house, beside the remodel, like adjusting to our new goat milking schedule, moving our baby goats to the barn, and making our first batch of goat milk ice cream, chocolate chip cookie dough of course!
-Jeremy
Blog: http://mnhomesteader.com/blog/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mnhomesteader
Love it. Your wife is a patient women. But it looks amazing. Love the bookshelves. I am stealing the idea for my den.
Thank you @gardengirlcanada! You'll love them! They divide the rooms while still keeping everything somewhat open feeling. We got the bookshelf idea from our last house, built in 1920. We picked up these antique ones and they worked perfectly in our house. At some point I will rebuild the pillars they would have also had.
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STOPIt looks beautiful. I imagine your wife is pleased with it. The shiplap is a really nice touch. Have you been able to feel the benefit of the added insulation yet? Is less heating required now?
Thank you @frugallady! She was happy to see the foil walls covered, for sure! The house was WAY less drafty this winter after the improvements we made! We still have two rooms left to gut out, so it should be even better next winter. This is our first year burning wood at this house as our heat source, so I don't have much to compare against. Our last house was a poorly insulated behemoth, so we had to burn wood and natural gas, and it was drafty, cold, and expensive to heat. The heating bill could exceed $300-400 a month in the winter. Excluding time, our heating costs this year were about $10-15USD in fuel to run our wood splitter and chainsaw.
Excluding time is the only way to calculate that and what a great difference!