New door and messes

I didn't take many pictures, but we put in a temporary-ish door.  Once the upstairs is done, I'll be moving up there and doing the downstairs, so I need a way to get in up there, plus it makes getting large materials inside much easier.  This was just an all in one thing from Lowe's that cost about $200.  Once I get around to doing the siding I'll replace the door and frame with something permanent.

We also broke the window on the stairs as we were moving a cart of trash down...

And made a mess of the front yard.  I backed my truck right up to the front door so we didn't have to deal with moving the carts down the front stairs and up into the bed.

Blowing Insulation

I didn't take any pictures, but before blowing the insulation back up, we put the new fiberglass insulation in to block the holes where the cellulose would just blow out.  We also put up the drywall on the slanted sections of the ceiling so we didn't have to worry about it falling out as we were working.

To actually blow the insulation up, we used the same server blower (I think it came from an IBM Bladecenter Type H) where that black hose I used to get dusty stuff out the window came from, in addition to 2 new 25' 8" hoses like I had before.  We tried a few different ways of actually blowing it, like feeding the insulation into the fan itself.  This didn't work since it kept clogging up, so we tried it with an old blower from what I am guessing was a swamp cooler, with a newish 3/4HP motor, but it also clogged up quickly.  We ended up buying some ducting so it could be fed into the air stream going into the 8" hose, and also attaching the other 8" hose to the intake and ran it outside so we wouldn't be sucking in insulation.  At first it was a pain to get the insulation in without it just blowing back out, but after awhile we got the hang of it.

You're probably wondering why we didn't just rent an actual insulation blowing machine to do this.  Well, since we're reusing the stuff that was already here, there's a bunch of crap in it like nails, screws, and small shards of wood, which I'm guessing would damage the machine.  Plus it's more fun to make your own.  A few months later I helped my neighbor insulate his attic, where we used a real insulation blower.  Mine was just as fast.  When I do the rest of the attic I'm going to try and make a system to feed it in.

My Dad preferred feeding the insulation compared to controlling where the hose went, so that's what he did most of the time.

Here's a video from the beginning, we clearly had no idea what we were doing...

And what it looked like on the output side

Soon after that we figure out the key was turning the blower sideways so the input was by the floor, and just shove it in from a big pile.  Luckily cellulose isn't itchy, so it's like playing in snow without the cold and wet.  We also decided to use that old swamp cooler blower to help get the dust out, when we turned the insulation blower off, all the dust would be gone within a few minutes.  I used an adjustable pulley on it and ran it at about 1.25HP so it moved a ton of air.

Here's a longer video which shows a better example of the process.  I'd make sure my dad had a pile and move the output hose around to get the insulation everywhere in the attic.  All the stuff drew around 18.5A.  The insulation blower requires at least 200V to turn on since it has a built-in VFD which I don't know how to control, so we had to use a transformer.  When I do the rest of the attic, I think I'll switch my supply up here to 240V and switch the other blower wiring over to 240V as well so I have less voltage drop on that 14AWG extension cord running upstairs.

It really was like it was snowing in there, this is the extension cord that ran the blower going outisde

And after we got enough insulation up in the first part, before we put more drywall up

Finally done with the attic of this room

Then we took the cellulose out of the walls and bagged it for later, and put the new fiberglass in.  There's some missing since a door will be going there.

Raising the ceiling

The ceilings in the upstairs were originally around 6'10", which felt pretty cramped, especially since downstairs they are 7'6" - 8'.  So I decided to raise the ceiling in the upstairs.  Luckily, because of the way the house was built, it actually isn't that difficult.  Above the ceiling in the master bedroom, there was a layer of (seemingly decomposing) wool insulation, then some unfaced fiberglass, and then the modern cellulose that's also in the walls.  This was actually really helpful since I wanted to reuse the cellulose after the ceiling was raised, but not the wool since it was dirty and gross.  Here's what it looked like after removing the old drywall on the ceiling and letting all the wool insulation fall out

And then with the fiberglass pulled out and all the cellulose knocked down (after cleaning up all the other stuff)

We (my Dad took some vacation time to come out and help me) decided to try and leave all of this there while we raised the ceiling joists and put up the drywall on the ceiling so we didn't have to bag any of it.  This ended up being a major pain in the ass and we would have been much better off bagging it.  Here's a look before we started raising them

Raising the ceiling joists were pretty simple, it was just pulling them down, cutting the ends, and then putting it back up in the new position.  Here's a few done, the new ceiling is about 8'4"

You can see the difference between the new and old height easier in this picture.  We didn't move the first joist yet, so it's still right over the windows

Finally all done

And now to put up some of the drywall, I bought a drywall lift from Harbor Freight and it was extremely helpful