It's snowing...no, it's insulation

When re-siding our house in summer 2007, Steve and I decided that we should have the house insulated as well being that it was well, drafty.  We wanted to be able to cover all of the little 1.5" holes that would need to be bored through the siding in order to blow in insulation before we got the house painted and while the paint was all stripped.

don't think you can see where the holes were bored as we had already patched and sanded

We had already insulated the living room ourselves from the inside as we had removed all of those walls in order to wire, fix some water damage near the chimney and re-frame some things so this saved us a little on cost.

Winter 2006/2007-a great project for newlyweds!

I got a number of bids and went for the cheapest as I figured, how hard could it be?  The company seemed just fine and they were punctual in their estimate and arrival.  We were also super house poor (we are always house poor but we were really house poor then).  We were newlyweds, I was newly employed, started paying the student loans and house loan and oh yea, in SHOCK!!!!! by how much an old house costs to restore. 

Anyways, back to insulation.  Boy, was I in denial about how hard insulated really could be.  Our contractors were terrible.  Not only did they blow insulation all over the freakin' house (it truly looked like middle of the summer snow storm)

but they broke holes in our interior plaster in several places.  I was shocked and so sad to see this as it is not only costly to repair plaster but so hard to match textures, and well, I love the texture of our plaster. 

this was the largest hole at over a foot in width, luckily it was in the closet and while not a perfect patch, I was able to repair myself

They also did not figure out that the floor below part of the wall was not closed to the basement, nor did they think "gosh, that is a lot of insulation for one little area, maybe we should stop and see where it is all going"  So, later in the day, I found this:

Now, if we had had a kid at that point, they would have been in heaven but it was no bueno for me.  I brought them the shop vac and they did a half-a** job of cleaning and finished up work.  At 5:01pm, they were finished with insulation but the house was a hot mess with snow.  Instead of cleaning up, they just said good-bye and drove off.  Well, I contacted the company that evening and told them the whole story, then Steve and I spent about 4-5 house that evening and the following day cleaning the "snow".  It ended up that we charged them what we would need to pay to have the plaster repaired plus an hourly charge for the time we spent cleaning and they took it off our bill, making the insulation only costing several hundred.  It saved us house poor people a ton of money but it would have been much better if it hadn't happened at all.

  Oh, the perils of home ownership and restoration!

A little insulation project I took on myself over the past month was insulating all the light and electrical sockets on the exterior walls of the house.  They were downright drafty and cold before.  I found the little insulator sheets (foam) at home depot for a couple bucks total.  I had to measure and cut out specially for our super old light switches but it was a quick and gratifying project overall.

The sky is falling

When prepping to have our columns out on our front porch rebuilt in July, we had to take out several overhanging boards to gain access to interior support system. While doing this, the cotton insulation we had blown in a couple years ago started flying everywhere as all of these items started falling. While Steve was yelling at me to just ignore the thing falling/vacuum up all the insulation before it went all over the neighborhood, I couldn't help myself from ignoring him and just starting to sort through the treasures. They were and are still covered in grime but it was so exciting to find. I met with one of the children of a previous owner (more to come on that with pictures) last month and she reported that her father drywalled the attic in the 40s so it seems right that everything seems from 1942 or earlier. I found items dated 1916-1942 and just love uncovering some of the house's hstory and past. I wonder if the girls that lived in the house would sneak into the attic to play and accidentally drop items into the walls or hide their forbidden candy wrappers in there so that their parents would not discover them ruining their dinner.
Anyways, Steve and I have found many other little children's treasures as we tear down walls and clean things up (we have also hid a few things ourselves for future owners to find if they dare take down the dining room walls).
Now how to display all of our finds??? Anyone have any suggestions as I would really like to show off all the cool little trinkets we have found from the past. First I should consider cleaning them up.



Newspaper dated 1916

• half destroyed picture of man standing
• plastic doll
• cuticle oil
• plastic manicure set box
• pencils
• 2 cent stamp
• metal child's bracelet
• slam book written by child (more later-this is hillarious)
• plastic doll
• metal promotional barrel from Bank of Beaverton (heavy-for paperweight? or pen holder?)
• mini yellow brochure offering 3 california pottery offers for fish salt and pepper shaker with metal stand or fish plate "a $1.25 value"-do you think they would still honor them today?

• 7th grade speller (folded) belonging to Wanda Lee Rands
• menthal use drops paper bag filled with candy wrappers
• Gestrings Coffee Shop (saying "Famous for our Chicken Dinners") promotional paper calendar showing Dec. 1941 with pages attached for 1942, address of shop was 1121 SW Stark, phone BR 6624 and BR 3070 (is this how you called into the operator?)
• menthal camphor ointment
• Beech Nut Spearmint Gum wrapper
• Flexo bars chocolate flavor crown jewels box
• Walnettos Candy Wrappers
• 30s fabric hanky

• baby doll parts,
• doll dress (1930s fabric?)
  
• comics (year unknown),
• deflated plastic baseball,
• paper turkey decor,
• birthday card to Wanda Lee Rands dated 1942 from grandma

cute print of some hunting hounds-needs a good cleaning