Spent the last five weekends in the attic and finally finished

I went trough a similar ordeal with my 1920s bungalow. Someone had slapped drywall over the original lath and plaster, leaving a four-inch gap filled with century-old soot and mouse droppings. I ended up renting a heavy-duty industrial vacuum for the weekend becasue my shop vac just couldn't handle that fine black dust. It’s messy, miserable work, but you realy can’t lay down new product til that filth is gone.

For the insulation, I used Knauf Earthwool R4.0 batts. I found that using a long broom handle to shove the batts into those tight eaves saved my arms from alot of scratches. It's those hard-to-reach corners where you lose all your heat, so getting them flush against the top plate is key. My total cost hit about $1,750 because I had to pay an electrician to check some old wiring before I covered everythign up. Even with the physical toll, the difference in soundproofing alone is incredible. Getting rid of that old, hollow ductwork makes the house feel solid instead of like a giant tin can.

After seeing the mess in my 1950s ranch, I decided against batts entirely. I looked at the rafters and realized I'd never get a tight seal around the electrical boxes and the uneven joist spacing. Instead of hauling those R3.5 bags up a ladder, I went with Stabilized Cellulose. I rented a blower from the local hardware store, which was acutally free because I bought thirty bags of the GreenFiber stuff. The process was way less physical than what you described. My brother stayed on the ground feeding the hopper while I stayed in the attic with the hose. We hit a consistent 14-inch depth across the whole floor in about four hours. It filled every tiny gap and crevice around the top plates that I know I would have missed if I was trying to cut fiberglass to size. I still had to do the prep work—sealing the light fixtures with fire-rated covers and foaming the wire penetrations—but the actual insulating part was the easiest bit of the renovation. It might not look as "clean" as those neat rows of pink batts, but the lack of seams makes a massive difference in our heating bills during the winter.

Glad you finished before the real heat hits. I did a similar job last summer and it's a total nightmare if you don't time it right. Since you had everything stripped back to the joists, I hope you hit those top plates with some spray foam first. It's the only way to stop the air leaks the batts can't catch. $1500 is a killer price for all that work, honestly. Beats paying a pro five grand just to tell you they won't touch the heavy lifting.