Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Insulation! At Last!

The insulation dudes came this morning. We hired them to pump 8 inches of insulation into the attic and then drill ten million holes in the brick exterior and pump our walls full of recycled, cellulose insulation. We will get an Obama tax refund AND save millions of dollars on our heating and cooling costs. Theoretically.

I find the process enormously interesting. To do the attic, they ran a big hose from their van up through the nursery window and into the closet and just pumped the attic full of the good stuff. Like with a vacuum in reverse. Then they started on the walls.

Poor Corey spent the whole weekend cleaning the inside and outside of all the windows, so clear that birds now fly into our dining room window regularly, and now all the windows are streaked with brick dust and chunks of insulation. One insulation man drills holes and the other follows behind him on another ladder with the backwards vacuum blowing in the cellulose. They are very much like clockwork, except they keep quarreling with one another.

The younger dude feels like he should be allowed to man the drill, only he keeps tapping into our air ducts when get gets a turn. The older one doesn't want to listen to country music cranked up louder than the sound of the brick drill. During this entire procedure, every contractor who lives on my block (and there are many--Morningside is a hearty, contractor-filled neighborhood) stops to chat.

"Hey! Do yinz work with THIS GUY? Nah? What about THIS GUY?" "Yinz guys know it's gonna rain today?" "Whadda yinz think about the Buccos trading Morgan?" (Ok, that last one was me trying to make conversation...)

I had to stop watching a few hours ago because the insulation was starting to come into my office through a hole the previous owners had drilled in the baseboards. The dusty wind was making me cough and it seemed better for me in my delicate state to go hide in the basement. On my way down, I did catch a glimpse of their lunch. The older one had a perfectly sensible sandwich and baggy of pretzels, likely packed by a spouse. The younger one? He ate a large sized bag of Herr's potato chips and drank a soda. It reminded me of my days at the pill factory, when a swift glimpse around the lunchroom revealed a man's marital status.

At last I have something to observe and be interested in while I wait for my child to emerge. Next week? The hairy-eared Italian concrete man will come build me a driveway! The stimulation never ends.

No comments: