Event summary!
- We insulated our attic!
- Spinach Festival!
- More zoo!
- Lena’s first trip to the art museum!
It’s nearly November, and I’m just now getting around to focusing on September’s update. Oops.
(I wrote most of this in early October, so at least the included details are accurate. There just aren’t as many details as there could have been.)
This month’s video will likely tell the story better than I can / am willing to.
Lena summary!
Lena seems to be at the quintessential baby age – she acts in the way that I thought babies acted before becoming a parent.
She doesn’t talk yet, but she has started to babble by repeating the same syllable.
She holds her head up very well and looks around the room with a cute, curious expression. The daycare teachers are very impressed with how observant and watchful she is. They frequently tell us that “she doesn’t miss a thing!”
She holds toys and will reach for something if you hand it to her. I find it fun to hold things out for her to grab, but sometimes I forget that it might not be safe for her to grab certain things, like forks, so I pull it away just before she touches it. She doesn’t seem to mind though.
Insulating the attic
When our first (and current) tenants moved in last summer, the air conditioner would not keep up with the heat. The thermostat never got below 78 °F on hot days, and they weren’t happy (albeit, very polite).
We had an HVAC company out to troubleshoot, and they concluded that the compressor levels were low and that the whole unit would need to be replaced ($4,000 – yay!), which I didn’t really question because the compressor was nearly 20 years old. So we replaced the AC.
But that didn’t fix the problem, at least not entirely. The HVAC company came back out to tune it up, and that seemed to help, but by that time it was late summer and temperatures were started to ease. In an effort to minimize our tenants’ future discomfort (and to convince them to stay, because we like them), we decided to blow in about 13″ of insulation to their side of the attic.
There wasn’t much there to begin with, which is why I thought it might help. The ceiling drywall was visible in many places, so the existing insulation was probably less than 4″ on average.
We bought the insulation from a local supplier because it was better quailty and cheaper than the stuff at Home Depot. But, we rented the blower from HD.
We did EVERYTHING in one day, which was a mistake. I wanted to minimize our interference in our tenants’ space, but it would have been better for us if we had split it into two days. And I know they wouldn’t have minded.
We also had a lot of issues with the blower itself. The hose was full of tears that past renters had duct taped. The hose broke multiple times near the connection to the blower itself, which resulted in delays and general frustration. It took us nearly 12 hours to finish the job, and we concluded around 8:00 pm. (And we still had tickets to an OK Go concert.)
We had originally planned to do our side the next day, but we were exhausted. It didn’t happen. For 11 months. And the unopened bags of insulation sat in the garage the whole time.
Anyways…that’s a lot of probably-unnecessary-backstory. BUT – it taught me that the prep work (stapling eave vents to the roof decking, sealing dropped soffits, and sealing miscellaneous air holes – LOTS of spray foam) is very important, and time consuming. I did all the prep work in August while Chelsea’s dad was here to help watch Lena (before her spot at daycare was open).
Chelsea’s mom was still here for the final shift of watching Lena, so Chelsea and I were free to focus on the job at task. With everything we learned from our previous experience, we were very efficient.
I got the blower from a different Home Depot, which was good decision because that store ran a tighter operation than the previous one. No issues with the blower.
I climbed into the attic early on for final checks and set everything up. Chelsea started prepping the bags for blowing. And it went pretty smoothly from there.
That’s way too many words to describe something so dull. Moving on…
Spinach Festival
Since we (apparently) live in the Spinach Capital of the World, we attended the Lenexa Spinach Festival. There were lots of activities for kids – fishing, birdhouse-building, music, games – but we only observed because our kid doesn’t do a whole lot other than smile, cry, and sleep (but she’s the best at them).
It was a nice day, and we enjoyed walking around. We tried the spinach balls (surprisingly good) and spinach smoothie (basically a banana smoothie with enough spinach added to make it green).
Zoo and art museum
We went to the zoo again and saw the elephants. It was a warm day and we had enough of the heat, so we decided to go to the art museum.
Lena decided to start babbling quite loudly while in the museum. We were in the modern art building when she started repeating DADADADA. That continued into the impressionist exhibit. Maybe she was inspired.
Miscellaneous
That’s about it.
I also went to the Illinois power plant. I took this neat picture of the stack.
