Friday's Excitement Around Here ----

if you can call it "excitement." I would call it more like "FRUSTRATION."

We own a house that was build in the very early '50s and back then people didn't put insulation in the walls. There was a little insulation put in the attic (who knows when) but I blew several feet of insulation into the attic several years ago with the help of my son.

Now we have plenty up there but you could feel the cold coming thru the walls since they were hollow - you could almost feel a breeze thru the walls on a windy day. Well, there are several energy conservation rebates available, one thru Rocky Mountain Power and the other thru Questar so we checked into having insulation blown into the walls. We had a representative from an insulation company stop by a couple of weeks ago and we decided to do it. We were assured that the job would be done professionally and there would be minimal work, on our part, to do once it was complete. The process goes as follows: #1. Everything has to be moved away from the outside walls and covered with plastic to keep the blown in insulation from getting all over your furniture. #2 The workmen show up in a large truck with a blower and hoses and all the insulation that is needed on the right day (sometime within a 4 hour window so you are at their mercy). #3 3" holes are drilled at strategic locations to access the voids in the walls (as you can see from the picture, they missed on a couple of attempts). #4 The insulation is blown into the walls, hopefully filling the walls with insulation. #5 (This is where the frustration comes in) Round wooden plugs are pushed into the pre-drilled holes, going into the wall past the surface of the sheetrock so sheetrock mud can be put over the plugs and textured to match the existing wall surface. As you can see from the picture, many many of them didn't fit. The workman took a hammer to force the plugs into the openings, hoping to achieve the desired depth. Well, it didn't work and now we have many many plugs that protrude from our walls. This all happened Friday afternoon into the early evening so we couldn't talk with the bigwigs of the insulation company. That is on the agenda for tomorrow morning!!!!! I have 3 different phone numbers to contact and hopefully we will be able to get some satisfaction from someplace or someone (keep your fingers crossed for us). When the work was done Friday, one of the workers wanted to use our vacuum, they had a shop vac for the big stuff but wanted to use ours also (only for fine stuff and sheetrock powder and other stuff like that). Well, after they left we proceded to continue cleaning up and much to our dismay, they had broken our vacuum. Vacuums are one of the few things that you really like to say that they suck but ours didn't!!!!!! Now, if you know my BH, you know that she likes a clean house and not having a vacuum nearly put her over the edge. Well, you all know that if mom isn't happy, nobody's happy, so I went to the very local Wal-Mart and got us an el cheapo vacuum and she took ours to the vacuum repair shop yesterday. (it will be done Tuesday, hopefully - unless it is something SERIOUS!!!!!).

We have returned the majority of our house to as normal as possible for now until we find out from the insulation bigwigs what they are going to do to make us happy. My BH (and some of you) know that I am not the most tactful person on the phone when I get started. I have been known to asK for someone who isn't a "bottom feeder". Yes, I have been hung up on several times but I am getting better as far as phone etiquette is concerned. We will see what happens tomorrow. WISH US LUCK AND LOOK FOR MORE PICTURES OF REPAIRED WALLS IN THE FUTURE.