Lee and I have been enjoying some lazy days on his vacation. A few days ago we went to the coast for the day with his parents and did some exploring. This weekend we took a 2 day trip to Bend and had a great time. Upon returning Jasper and Jack (who had been locked inside and out respectively) were desperate for attention, even if it meant sitting next to each other. Jack then moved on to a friendlier snooze buddy.

We are in the process of picking new windows for the second floor. There are two windows to be replaced: one on each end of the house. These are the major sources of light on the second floor, other than the dormer (which lights the hallway) and the solar tube (which will light the master bathroom).

The existing windows are double hung, with each sash having about 26″ by 24″ of glass. They fit into rough openings that are about 4″ too wide for a modern window, because the old windows have sash weights fit between the jams and the studs. We see ourselves as having two options: 1.) Install a new window which exactly matches the existing in terms of glass area (and furrow out the studs to fit). 2.) Install a larger window which takes advantage of the 4″ larger rough opening, sized to be taller as well to maintain the proportion.

The following picture shows the existing window on the right, and a mock-up of the proposed larger window on the left. The larger window is 4″ wider and 3″ taller.

Pros

• More light – Brighter rooms are nice, especially since thicker walls will mean a narrower viewing angle
• No rough opening alterations – Well, except for height, but that’s easy in a gable end wall

Cons

• Consistency – There are presently 6 windows of this size in the house. Two on each end wall (the other in the photo above is hid by the tree), and two framing the big window on the front. Do we replace all of these with the larger window? We can’t for the front windows .. it will alter the proportions and run the trim together. So this will introduce a new window size in two or four of the 6 locations.
• Cost – Larger windows are a little more expensive. Not by much, proportionally, but some.
• Balance – Does the window look too dominating in the altered photo? Does the original size seems a little lost on the gable end?
• Insulation – Bigger windows are colder than smaller windows. Not by much, proportionally, but some.

Which do you prefer?

Up until two nights ago, there have been multiple direct paths between our interior living space and the outdoors. For some areas, such as the first floor ceilings (open to the eave vents) we’ve simply stapled up plastic to hold in the air. For the second floor, we are in the middle of actual retrofit work and have to take things in order.

So far, we’ve talked about installing the foam bypasses and the new double stud top plates on the angled portion of the second floor ceiling. The knee wall was also strengthened by adding shear bracing and we started insulating the knee wall with fiberglass. That step has now been completed as shown here:

Two bays aren’t insulated in that picture. The final bay, where the knee wall intersects the end wall, will be insulated after we add shear bracing to the end wall (yes, we’re bracing everything). The half bay that isn’t insulated will eventually be cut out to become our front attic access. Our house has four separate attic spaces that will be insulated with blown-in cellulose, and each needs their own seal-able access panel. We will try our best to disguise them in the final detail work.

At the back of the house, we in-filled the attic bays on either side of the dormer with foam, and then added OSB to the attic portion of the dormer sides. Both sides of the dormer also had two stud bays headered off. These are going to form built-in book cases on each side right next to the window seat by the dormer window. The backs of the bookcases will have concealed access panels to get into the attic space on each side. The attic portion of the dormer walls will be insulated with 4″ foam much later. For now, we’re just relying on the OSB and stapled in plastic to hold in the heat. Note that the headers are only half finished. I ran out of 2×6, and I also want to get some 1/2″ foam to make a laminated header to reduce thermal bridging.

The foam insulated bypasses had some gaps where things didn’t fit together real well, so we filled these with spray foam and then had to trim off the excess with a flush-cut saw. Spray foam is obnoxious to work with (and spendy), but it gets the job done and provides R-6 per inch.

Next, we started adding the “real” insulation for the angled ceiling areas. This is formed by 2″ thick 8′ foam panels that are cut to fit tightly against the double stud plate above and come down to the knee wall. The first step in installing these is to caulk more of the bypass gaps, and also apply a ring of caulk to each bypass panel to seal it to the next layer. If the bypass panels do not adhere tightly to the next layer, then cold air will infiltrate between the layers and we’ll lose the insulating value of the outer layer. I’m using only siliconized latex caulk which has a significantly longer life than the plain latex variety. The beads of blue in the photo are PL300 foam adhesive.

Once an area was caulked and adhesive applied, we held the foam panel in place and tacked it up with 3″ plastic cap roofing nails. Enough nails were applied to hold the layers together until the adhesives dried. Long term, these panels will also be held in place by the next layer of stud framing. I really hate these nails, as they bend at the slightest provocation.
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After installing a panel, we caulked the seams against the roof and framing in preparation for the next layer. So far four panels are up, (32′ linear feet). The rest have to wait until the end walls are sheathed. The remaining gaps between the roof and the double studs were closed in with stapled plastic to hold in the heat. This is the first time our house has been “closed in”, but it didn’t appear to make a huge difference with temperatures dropping to 12° for the last few nights. This weekend we’re supposed to have a 40° night, so we look forward to making ourselves uncomfortably warm for the first time in months.

Next up: wood blocking, metal strapping, insulation, and sheathing for the end walls …

There are many things I like about having left suburbia Arizona for an old house on a few acres in Oregon. One of the best, is that I feel so much more in tune with the cycles of nature. Each season holds new and exciting changes: warm dry summers, blankets of heavy fog in the early winter, and the cold evenings and lush growth of spring. We look up at night and see an expanse of stars on inky black, not circling airplanes on muddy brown. For some reason, I even keep better track of the moon (about half full and waning).

Unfortunately, our remodel-in-progress of a house leaks in a little too much nature when the temperature drops. This past week has been brutal, with outdoor temperatures never getting above freezing. We run the woodstove from morning until 2AM, and that keeps the second floor passably warm and the first floor downright cold. I’ve considered pulling the freezer thermometer out a few times to check the indoor temps, but decided against it. Best not to know. Water wasn’t freezing inside, so it must be above 32°.

Today the bottle of olive oil on our kitchen counter caught my eye. It was the wrong color and also not clear. I picked it up, and realized that it wasn’t moving. Olive oil froze on our counter! Eeks. A little browsing online reveals that this occurs at refrigerator temperature, about 37°. So … on the plus side the produce setting out on our counter should keep well .. but I’m still looking forward to when a coat and gloves are no longer standard issue for first floor living.

I must say that when I decided to follow Robert Plamondon’s advice on open-air chicken housing, it was with some reservations. The health benefits to the birds for the improved ventilation are quite obvious, but it seems the health detriments to them in cold weather are equally so. Well, it seems I have no cause for concern. Last night the temperature dropped to 12° and our birds were fine in the morning. Robin shot this picture of the little chicken mafia in the afternoon, still below freezing.

When I let them out this morning, there were 4 well-chilled eggs waiting for me, and 11 very thirsty birds. We don’t have a water heater, so the ritual each morning is to thaw out the chicken waterer and refill it. Then they all do their best at emptying the thing. I will be very glad when the weather gets warmer around here. Winter in Oregon is not supposed to be frost-bite inducing.

We recently bought half a pig from a local farmer. When you buy a pig directly like this, you pay the farmer a set price per pound “hanging weight”. This is the weight of the pig after it has been gutted, skinned, and the head removed. So hanging weight includes the meat, fat, and bones, not just meat. The butcher gets a flat rate for processing the carcass, and then a fixed price per pound (hanging weight also) to cut, season (sausage), cure (hams and bacon), and wrap the meat. Since there are so many variables, we thought it would be useful to present the the details of our purchase.

The graph below shows how the hanging weight of our pig breaks down into meat, fat, and waste. The fat would also be considered waste, if you didn’t want to make lard with it. The percent of meat should be representative of most modern pig breeds. (This was a Yorkshire cross.) The cuts of meat, however, is determined by your instructions to the butcher and can vary quite significantly. Robin doesn’t like pork chops, so we opted for more roasts and sausage. We have plenty of ground beef from our quarter cow purchase, so we wanted all the ground pork cuts made into sausage too.

So, our 113 lb half-pig produced 73.5 lbs of meat. We paid $226 to the farmer and $91 to the butcher. This works out to $4.32/lb for local, naturally raised (not organic) pork. Yes, this is a more expensive than the meat you can buy at the store, but we consider it a good deal for three reasons:

• Flavor – The sausage, bacon, and other cuts of meat taste awesome. There’s no comparison to the stuff you can buy at the store. Our pig was fed huge quantities of wind fallen apples, excess garden produce, and other things. You get out what you put in.
• Knowledge – We know the who, what, when, and where of our pig’s life. Store bought pork is a mystery. There might be a picture of a pretty farm on the label, but I wouldn’t suggest going by that. A pound of sausage might contain meat from dozens or hundreds of animals, killed under highly stressed conditions, and processed at a plant that has had .. how many recalls this year?
• Supporting Local – This is local meat from a small family farm. Hard to argue the benefits of that. For an overview of the social ills of the industrial meat system, I recommend watching Food Inc.

This is the second time we have made lard. The first time was in a lard making group party where no one had done it before. We spent the whole time reading out directions and asking each other if they thought we were doing it right. Thankfully, this time it seemed much easier after doing it once before.

We requested that the fat be saved from the half of pig we bought when it was butchered. Our lard from last year was getting down and we wanted a fresh supply for next year. Some things taste best cooked in lard. The goal in rendering lard is to boil out all the water and strain out all the impurities. You do this by slowly melting the fat, and raising it to a temperature just above the boiling point of water. If you get it too hot, the oil will start to burn and the lard will take on a “piggy” taste. This is not a fast process. I know some people toss it in a large casserole dish in the oven at 250 for 24 hours or so. We processed it in a pot on the stove top for about 7 hours.

The fat will come from the butcher in what looks like ribbons. That surprised me for some reason. I’m not sure why.

I ground it up as it seems to speed up the whole melting/cooking process. I used my grandmother’s old sausage grinder that my mom lent me.

You add a little water to the bottom of the pan. This is to help conduct heat to the pieces of fat which starts the melting process and helps prevent burning. About a half cup of water or so will do it. We started out with just a little of the fat in the pot and then added more as it started to melt.

The fat is mostly melted in this picture. All the remaining granules of meat and fat have sunk to the bottom. (Stir regularly.)

To help speed along the process, we started straining out the bigger bits left in the oil. It was getting very late at this point and most of the fat had melted. When all the water is boiled out of the oil you won’t get bubbles raising through the liquid. You want to make sure that all the water gets boiled out, otherwise you can get botulism in the lard later on.

Here is what the some of that strained material looked like.

We used canning jars for containers. We put the jars into a pan that was on top of some hot pads. The oil is VERY hot so you need to be super careful. Once the water is boiled out of the oil, you place some cheese cloth over top of the jars and ladle oil into them. This will strain out all the fine particulates left in the oil.

The hot liquid oil will be yellow in color. Don’t worry, that’s normal. Wipe off the rims, put the lids on, and then screw the rings on.

You wouldn’t think it, but that yellow stuff you put into the jars turns into a nice cream color once it solidifies. We ended up getting a little over 4 quarts from that half of pig we bought.

Jack has decided to take her life into her own paws and start using the dogs for pillows. She is becoming obsessed with the dogs and circles around waiting for them to lay down. Then as soon as they are laying down she snuggles in. Sometimes she gives herself a bath and other times she decides to play with the dogs fur. For a one eyed cat she is becoming quite brave.

Anybody want to cheer with me? That is indeed what you think it is in the below picture. Lee has officially started on the knee wall insulating. Now before you all get too excited for me in my luxurious living conditions, let me tell you that it’s not as warm as it looks. I’m shivering as I type. It’s a start though. Lee has about 2/5th of the knee walls done right now. Somebody needs to complain to Lee to make him finally post where this is all going. Hmm, then again with him down at his computer mulling about writing the perfect post makes it so he’s not insulating…