Good News From the Energy Audit and Some Demolition

Today I took a half-day at work and met up with a guy from our utility to do an efficiency audit. He gave us some really good news: the house already got cellulose blown-in insulation on all exterior walls and in the attic, which means we don’t have to pay to have that done.

In other good news, the fridge is old enough that we’ll get a rebate for replacing it. And trust me, I have no intention of using that old fridge. Nick the Efficiency Guy opened it to check and I jumped back and said DON’T OPEN THAT. But it had been cleaned/emptied before being abandoned so he didn’t wind up unleashing fetid doom on the house.

Then I did a little demo.

This is about halfway through today’s smashing of the walls between the dining and living room. I got most of it out, although I left the studs and chimney stack in there. Clearly. I’m excited to smash stuff but anything that looks important I’m leaving to the experts:

I also knocked off some drywall around a chimney stack in the kitchen that we’re planning on removing. Behind the drywall we found some interesting 70s-ish wallpaper:

More relevant to the work that needs to be done most immediately, I tore off some ivy from the edge of the house, and then leaned on the exterior back stairs railing a little too hard…

Which means I guess we can add “replace exterior back stairs” to the to-do list.

But that’s OK. Our contractor (shout out to Lobsang at Tibet Construction, he’s a seriously good guy) is pulling permits today to replace the roof and repair the window sills and so forth. Looks like we’ll have the house weatherproofed before the really cold weather hits.