Insulation in/Bats out!

I thought you might like to know you can sleep a little better now that all the bats are out and the new insulation is in! Actually, there were no bats at the time since they haven't migrated back yet, but when they do, they'll have to relocate to the barn! Hopefully, they'll find all their regular doorways shut tight! Let's hope! The "batman" and crew of two came last Friday and cleaned out the old insulation, bat guano and disinfected. He looked like an astronaut going into the attic with all his special gear and came out looking like a coal miner he was so dirty. They bagged what they could and threw it out the window, then sucked the rest of it up with a heavy duty sweeper. The following Tuesday they came back and spent all day blowing in the insulation and only took a 15 minute break going from 9:30 a.m. 'till 4:30 p.m. It was all quite interesting and I found out more about bats than I care to know! And along with it a lot of funny bat stories!

Upon cleaning out the attic, I discovered a lot of old textbooks that MarthaJean & Mary Louise left behind. I boxed what I could up, vacuumed them and left them for the family to peruse through and take if you want them. Otherwise, I'll recycle them later in the fall after everyone gets a chance at them.

Four-legged friends and bats!

The latest and greatest news to report is I'm in the process of getting all our four legged friends out from under the(ir) house and back into the woods (ground hogs, raccoons, and yes, even a skunk) by filling in all the cracks and securing the blocks and installing new "temp-vents" and crawl space access doors that have screens behind them to keep out the smaller critters. The "temp-vents" will open and close automatically according to the temperature outside and will help with heating and cooling (ventilating) the house. I've also hired a bat extraction professional. He will spend a day cleaning the attic and removing he contaminated insulation with a specialized vacuum hepa filtered system. The next day, a "green" insulation will be blown in to bring it up to code's R value of 39. All the holes where the bats are finding access will be plugged and sealed as well. We have until May 1st to complete all this because the bats will be migrating back to their nests then and having their young. I did get a bat house I'll erect somewhere far enough away from the house not to have to endure the mess but still keep them close enough to eat our mosquitoes! I'm guessing most of them find their way to the barn anyway!

Last month I also switched over to 200 AMP service as per the requirements for a new heating/air system. During the installation a hot wire was found in the electrical box where it had arced and charred a black spot on the framing. We were blessed that it had not started a fire!

When you arrive back to the farm this summer, you'll find I did a little rearranging. When Aunt Joanne gave the farm back the twin beds I had a dilemma of where to put them. I thought the downstairs bedroom would be appropriate but soon realized there just wasn't adequate space. I finally came up with a solution. I moved them upstairs into "grandfathers/daddy's" room and that bed downstairs. The beds headboard are against the windows and there's plenty of room on either side to move around. I kept the vanity where it was and put the quilt stands at the foot of each bed. I'll post pictures on some of my future posts so you can see what I mean. I think whoever sleeps in there will be quite comfortable and the sun won't be shining in your eyes when you wake up in the morning.