I am becoming cranky AND crotchety AND air-headed. I need to get organized to resolve that! It's odd getting pushed into doing something big you didn't expect. I am usually very prepared and have thought through everything in advance. Right now I feel pushed to catch up with where reality is.
I just want my sink and one gas burner! Whine, moan, self-pity.
The good news
We are sporting a nice robins egg blue from the first layer of insulation. It gives me some hope! Judging from the smell - the foam in the plaster walls of the second floor above the kitchen also dried out and the smell of wet foam has decreased. dh is very sensitive to mold and has just about stopped reacting. My long term fear, of course, is that the rest of the house will grow mold - or never dry out - or both.
In the end, we decided to pad out the walls by 3/4". The existing framing was very rough - the drywall was glued (who knew?). It would have taken close to forever to get enough of the glue scraped off to yield flat walls. This gave some extra room for insulation - all to the good. The first layer of insulation is nice - Polyisocyanurate. Now, we are Super Tuff-R. The difference with only 3/4" installed is amazing.
The second layer will be some new jazzy stuff called Safertouch that acts like fiberglass in r value and fitting, is soft and fluffy but you don't need gloves or masks to handle it. It doesn't need to be stapled either. So help me, it looks like quilt batting and made from recycled materials. It will be installed next week.
We ran a water test with a hose, followed by three days of actual rain and got no leaks! The foam installer tried to say that the water in the walls came from another source. The test was to make sure there wasn't another source of leaks. We feel relieved that there wasn't and it was safe to go ahead and install.
The not-so-good news
The electric! We found some corrosion in the outlets, the nails holding the blue boxes and the wire staples - so those are all being replaced.
Taking the opportunity of having the walls opened, we are moving the telephone jack to a more sensible place and the backsplash outlets down 2 inches. We are changing the lighting a bit because of the counter height seating area is deeper than the breakfast bar. The single ceiling fixture will be swapped for pendants.
We found ants. When we invited them to leave, they refused. Unfortunately, they all were poisoned and died. My kitchen is a mass grave. I wrote a prayer in sharpie on the insulation.
The foam contractor offered us $400, "not admitting any fault, but in the interests of customer service, or, we can insulate the newly remodeled kitchen after its completion for no charge." We wrote them back offering that they pay $4700 - which is the current budget - not including the electric or painting.
We are consulting a lawyer this week and are "in production" of a little video. Retrofoam is heavily sold as nonflammable. We became curious when the contractor accused us of faking a mold photograph and implied we had scorched it removing the drywall. Leaving aside the fascinating issue of how one removes drywall with a blow torch -- we kinda,sorta lit a chunk of Retrofoam with a household lighter. It starts turning black at 5 seconds and ignites at around 20-30 secs.
The RetroFoam v. Jet-Puffed ignition smackdown video was born. We got the Jet-Puffs (candy aisle if you are looking) but it won't quit raining, so our production is in hiatus until sun. Retrofoam isn't supposed to fume either. It doesn't smell terribly bad while burning. But you can "see" a lot of stuff in the air around it so we don't want to film indoors.
