bundle up, it's getting cold!

Good morning.

It's been a dreary cloudy cold couple of days. Sunday, I did some more weatherizing of the house. We have a trap door in the hall that goes into the attic. I decided to put another sealed door over the other to increase insulation. With Craig's advice, I ended up buying a Styrofoam panel rated a 10. Cut 2 pieces out of it to fit the opening. That would give me an extra insulating value of 20 total besides the existing door and blanket insulation on top of that. After I wedged the first panel into place, I could feel cold air coming through one edge.

So I was right in thinking the trap door

with blanket insulation on top wasn't enough!

And since you can't possibly cut Styrofoam perfectly,

I used pipe wrap insulation to fill in the gaps.

I tore sections of pipe wrap, and with a

screwdriver wedged it in the cracks

to form a good seal.

Here's the finished job.

I also redid some of the weather stripping around some doors. And with the furnace on now, I won't need the vent fan in the bathroom, so I took off the cover, and stuffed a bunch of insulation in there too. I think we're pretty much good for winter now.

On Monday, Craig and I went to Muskegon to visit my mom. I cut her hair, took her to Applebees for lunch, and then to the VFW for some pull tabs and the $1 drink specials they have on Mondays. And guess what? We actually won $150.00! Cool! My mom could use some extra cash. I read in the papers how VFW's are struggling around the country, but this one has actually gained memberships. For a Monday afternoon, there were maybe 20-25 people there. But they do a lot to encourage visits. They do Nascar parties in the summer, dinners a couple times a month, with proceeds to charity, football and basket ball parties in the winter. They seem to have something going on all the time.

That's all I got for now......