Vintage Life: Bungalow Renovation HVAC, Insulation & Drywall

As we are about to move into our 1920s vintage bungalow, I've been updating blog readers about the renovations we've done since we first saw the house for sale in historic Newberry, SC, in 2011. It was in desperate need of love, as you can see from my two recent posts about the first stages of the vintage bungalow renovation and the second stages of the vintage bungalow renovation.

This is how it looked in summer 2012, soon after we'd done all the landscaping and also added beautiful new siding.

Looks pretty, doesn't it? But the inside was a whole other picture! Then we took about a year off from working on our little bungalow. Life got busy and home renovation funds ran low. Also, Greg's carpal and cubital tunnel syndrome in both hands reached the point where he couldn't hold tools without his hands going numb, which obviously put a damper on progress. Three surgeries and a re-financing later, by January 2014 we could get back on track with the bungalow!

The first order of business was HVAC. We had ripped out all of the old ductwork, so we ran new ductwork throughout the house and up to the new upstairs space that used to be the attic.

Luckily the existing AC unit looked to be in good condition, so it just needed to be serviced.

When we originally pulled down the walls, we were surprised to find that the house did not have any insulation whatsoever. We debated doing foam insulation, but in the end we found a great deal on Craig's List for enough roll insulation to do the whole house.

We did add a foil radiant barrier and foam board behind the insulation for a little extra warmth.

Here's the insulation up, and ready for the drywall. Soon it WILL look wonderful!

Greg is amazingly accurate with materials calculation. He figured we needed 202 eight-foot sheets of drywall, but all of the contractors who came to quote the drywall job thought it was way too much.

We hired a company to hang and mud the drywall for us in order to speed up the renovation. With the walls going up, we finally felt we were making progress toward finishing this project. In the end, Greg totally nailed it with his calculations.  It took exactly 202 sheets of drywall to put walls up in the entire house!

This is the upstairs with the walls in place. Next up is painting inside and out and a new roof!