Improving our Home's Energy Efficiency

Today's post is less of a Pinterest inspired project (sorry guys) and more of a home improvement project.  (I do have some home improvement projects inspired by Pinterest coming soon.  I just need to get them finished.  I can't wait to share them with you, so I hope you'll stay tuned!) 

Our house is 30 years old and not very energy efficient.  We've lived in this house for 8 years with cold spots and drafts every winter and finally decided to do something about it by improving the insulation in our attic.  The house had insulation, but only R-15.  We upgraded the insulation to R-38 and sealed up many places where there were leaks.  This is what our attic over the garage looked like after the insulation was blown in.  Before this there was NONE!  That's right - no insulation over the garage!  It was freezing cold in the winter and hot in the summer and always affected the temperature in the rest of the house.

So, putting insulation in the attic meant I had to spend a weekend helping to pull all this stuff down out of the attic and putting it in the garage. 

Not exactly how I wanted to spend my weekend, but I was glad I didn't have to be up in the attic putting in plywood decking.  Believe it or not, all this stuff was resting on flattened cardboard boxes laid over the joists in the attic!  The plywood decking is replacing the cardboard to provide more stable storage. 

Now our attic is insulated, more energy efficient, and it's easier to store things.

Now I just have to spend another weekend putting all that stuff in the garage back up in the attic!