INNNNSULATION!

(Please sing the title with the notes/gusto of INTERJECTION! from School House Rock. That's how it's meant to be).

Our house is finishing getting INSULATED! today. This is very, very exciting.

When winter comes every year, I have a hard time dealing with the cold. The Iowa winds whip right through our 85-year-old plaster walls, and I  imagine that I'm Laura Ingalls Wilder/a tough-as-nails B.A. pioneer.  Or I imagine what my ancestors must have felt like when they moved from balmy Germany/Ireland to the rough, un-tamed Northern Illinois/Northern Missouri landscape. It doesn't make me feel warmer, sadly. So, mostly, I just freeze and try to deal.

In year 1 of living in our little house, I moved a space heater with me wherever I went, and tried to limit my occupation of rooms in the house to the living room couch, the bedroom, and short trips to the bathroom (which doesn't have a heating vent at all...brilliant).

For year 2, my parents gave us an early Xmas present of an electric stove/fireplace, so I'd sit on the couch all winter with a giant, lighted electric heater and take my portable heater with me as well, carefully trying to avoid plugging the portable heater into an outlet that was shared on the same circuit as the fireplace. I learned quickly that two electric heaters on the same circuit is not good. The lights will go out.

During year 3, I decided that screaming with cold and alternating with chattering teeth is no way to try to fall asleep in one's bed, so I invested in a pair of adult-size, fleece, footed pajamas and would alternate locations of a heat-pad before climing in (this brilliant idea came to me after imagining that I was Felicity, a colonial American girl whose character doll came with a copper bed-warming accessory). I'd also trap my cats under the bed with me and hold them close for warmth until they wriggled away.

I think it was this final scene - wife clad in a 3-year old's pajamas, yowling cats, and floating heat pad that may have finally suggested to my husband that perhaps we should invest in insulating our walls.

Or, actually, the suggestion came from our friendly representative at the our elecric company when we got an energy audit prior to finishing the basement. During the summer, our contractor suggested that we have an energy audit because our electric company does rebates for insulation. We were already putting insulation into our basement remodel, so we got a nice rebate to help with those costs. If you complete other suggestions (insulate walls and attic) in a specific period of time, our electric company will also pay up to 60 or 70% of the cost.

So, a few weeks ago, Andrew called the electric company to make sure that we still had enough of a window of time to complete the project, and then we called the same person who had done our basement insulation for a quote. After rebate, we realized that it in 2 years, we will have paid for the cost of insulation in our energy savings. Pretty awesome! The guys came out yesterday and finished the exterior walls, and the attic will be completed today.

Yay, warmth!!